AU won first place in this year’s national RecycleMania competition.
RecycleMania posted the final results on April 13, labeling AU as the “grand champion” out of the 266 total colleges and universities who competed in the “grand champion” category.
RecycleMania is a program that promotes waste reduction on college campuses over an eight-week period each spring.
AU reduced their cumulative greenhouse gases by 229 metric tons, the equivalent of taking 120 cars off the road or eliminating the energy consumption from 60 households, according to RecycleMania’s website.
“We feel that it had a lot of success in making people rethink what it means to throw things away, especially in terms of our institutional goal to send zero waste to the landfill,” AU’s Sustainability Outreach Specialist Joshua Kaplan said.
AU placed 193rd out of 288 colleges and universities in last year’s RecycleMania competition. Kaplan said AU’s greatest strengths in the competition were its outreach ability, passionate students, and improved accessibility to recycling methods across campus.
“We really tried to innovate this year,” Kaplan said. “We made recycling a relevant and interesting issue for a large portion of the campus community.”
New events this year included “Solo Cup recycling awareness,” a recycled sculpture competition and an electronic waste drive on the Quad.
