Temple University’s Office of Sustainability is currently in an 8-week long recycling competition, RecycleMania. There are 190 other colleges across the nation competing to see who can recycle the most and have the least trash per capita.
Director of Sustainability, Kathleen Grady, and the rest of the Office of Sustainability’s goal is to collect 350,000 pounds of trash. That total would equate to 26-pounds per person across Temple’s campus.
This year we have recycled less than previous years and the data was able to tell us why.
Morgan Numtuda, an Office of Sustainability intern, says that cardboard was being recycled less than previous years. To improve this, they have started posting signs around dorm trash rooms and other locations around campus to highlight things that are able to be recycled.
In order to encourage Temple students to recycle, the Office of Sustainability is holding several events like a box fort competition and a Trashion Show. They are also handing out t-shirts to students they see
either recycling or using reusable water bottles. They hope all of these will not only encourage people to recycle but also be conscious of the environment.
In 2014, Temple won first place in the “Game Day Organics Competition.”
Grady says, “this is a friendly competition between schools to compare data, but on the other hand, we want to win.” She also wants media attention to not only be on our successful sports teams but our teams that promote and recycle during and after each game.
Temple is currently ranked 132nd in the whole competition, but there is still four more weeks to go. Glass, plastic, newspaper and cardboard are just a few of the things students and faculty can recycle to help Temple improve their data and ratings. The winners will be announced April 18th.
You can follow the Office of Sustainability on twitter @TempleEcoOwls for more event updates and Temple’s final results.
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