Teams Take on Tons of Trash

February 26, 2008

New Wave staff
newwave@tulane.edu

Teams of Tulane students are signing up to compete in RecycleMania, a national competition that pits more than 200 colleges and universities against each other to see who can collect the largest amounts of recyclable trash.

For the second year, Tulane is competing in the paper and cardboard recycling categories, as well as the grand champion category, which measures the percentage of university waste that is recycled.

Student teams can sign up online for Tulane’s on-campus RecycleMania competition that will give prizes from the Crescent City Farmers Market, Creole Creamery, Plum Street Snoballs, the Audubon Zoo and the Rathskellar in the Lavin-Bernick Center to the teams collecting the most recyclable material. Winners will be determined at weigh-ins on Fridays. 

Undergraduate and graduate students can compete in small groups of one to 10, medium groups (11 to 25 students) and large groups (26 to 50 students).

For this year’s recycling campaign, student recycling coordinator Allie Shipp hopes to encourage the Tulane community to reduce and reuse with a new signature reusable cup. Ahmed Salahudeen, a senior majoring in neuroscience with a minor in studio art, is the winner of a design competition held in December.

Fountain drinks in the LBC and the Drawing Board in the Richardson Memorial Building will be 99 cents when a customer uses the refillable cup, and the PJ’s on the uptown campus, as always, gives a 25-cent discount when a customer brings a refillable cup. Tulane’s recycling program is selling the cups, made possible by Dining Services and HireTulaneGrads.com, in the LBC food court.

“I think that it’s important to be aware of the human impact on the environment and act to lessen it because we are quickly destroying our home planet,” says Shipp, who is a senior environmental studies major. 

“If we consciously change our lifestyles and reduce the amount of waste we produce, we may be able to preserve and protect the few beauties of nature that remain unscathed.”

In 2007 Tulane recycling returned to pre-Katrina levels, says Liz Davey of the Office of Environmental Affairs, who coordinates Tulane's environmental sustainability programs.

“Paper collection more than doubled 2006 levels, and the computer recycling program collected an estimated 30 tons of equipment,” Davey says. “The addition of containers for Mardi Gras beads during the annual move-out donation drive collected about five tons of beads.”

The program hopes to restore containers for aluminum can and plastic bottle recycling at Tulane soon, Davey adds.