Ohio University sets top 20 goal during RecycleMania 2019 competition

Photo courtesy of: University Communications and MarketingRecycleMania plastic on the Athens Campus from a past competition

Ohio University is competing in RecycleMania, an eight-week long national recycling competition that began in early February.

RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities.

OHIO Campus Recycling has established its goals for this year’s RecycleMania competition. Among them is a top 20 finish in the nation and to place higher than all of the other participating Mid-American Conference schools. It also wants to beat Ohio State University in four target categories: E-waste, diversion rate total, food organics and the GameDay Challenge. The stakes are particularly high since OHIO is defending the title of National GameDay Challenge Champion.

In recent years, OHIO also has made leaps in improving its overall diversion ranking from 38th place in 2017 to 29th place in 2018.

To help reach those goals, Campus Recycling will host a variety of events on and off campus to raise awareness about the importance of recycling and waste reduction:

• Shelf Life: March 1, noon-5 p.m., in front of the Athens County Courthouse, an interactive art display will be erected to raise awareness and educate community members about the pollution plastic bags cause. There will also be a give-a-way of donated reusable bags.
   
• GameDay Challenge: Tuesday, March 5, at the Convocation Center from 6 to 9:30 p.m., during the OHIO Men’s Basketball game against Buffalo. Campus Recycling will promote recycling and have extra staff on hand to help aid in the collection of recyclable materials.
   
• Recycle Bots: March 6 from noon to 5 p.m. at Passion Works Studios. Passion Works and Campus Recycling are teaming together to host Recycle Bots, repurposing e-waste into robot sculptures that will be put on display across Athens in local businesses.

RecycleMania started in 2001 as a dual competition between Ohio University and Miami University. Since its creation, more than 1,000 colleges and universities have participated.

For more information, visit the OHIO Campus Recycling and Zero Waste website at https://www.ohio.edu/recycle/ or the RecycleMania 2019 website at https://recyclemania.org/