Over the next two months, Syracuse University will participate in Recycle Mania, a countrywide competition between universities with this year’s contest featuring an individual component.

This is the third year SU will participate, and only the second year in the actual competition, said Melissa Cadwell, marketing manager of sustainability, in an email.

Students looking to get involved can do a number of things, most of them quite small. Recycling plastic bottles of all kinds, saying no to plastic bags at the store or taking the stairs instead of the elevator, Cadwell said. New this year to the competition is an individual component. Students will be able to tweet or text when they complete specific actions, earning points for their university along the way, according to the Recycle Mania website.

“The ultimate goal is to get the campus community recycling,” Cadwell said. “The secondary goal would be to place better than we did last year.”

Last year, SU finished 76th in the competition with a recycling rate of 35.5 percent. This year’s competition started Feb. 1 and will extend until March 28, according to the Recycle Mania website.

“With students, faculty and staff coming from all over the world, Recycle Mania is a good opportunity to teach them about local recycling opportunities and requirements,” said Sherburne Abbott, vice president for sustainability initiatives and university professor of sustainability science and policy, in an email.

Stacy Wheeler, the president of Recycle Mania, said she believes that by framing recycling in a competitive format, students will be energized to participate.

“We have found that when schools compete against their rival, their individual change in behavior, like recycling a newspaper, is significantly increased,” Wheeler said.

The point system is based on how much is actually being recycled and composted. In order to determine the points, all of the recycled items are weighed every week, along with the food waste bins in the dining hall, according to Recycle Mania website.

Recycle Mania started in 2001 when Wheeler, then a senior at Miami University of Ohio, and Ed Newman, a senior at Ohio University, decided to pit their schools against each other. The project snowballed and had 93 schools participating in the competition in 2006. By 2008, 400 schools were participating in Recycle Mania, according to the Recycle Mania website.

Since its inception, millions of students from 727 colleges and universities have recycled and composted roughly 653 million pounds of material during competition time, Wheeler said.

Participants in Recycle Mania have prevented the release of nearly 900,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, comparable to removing seven million passenger vehicles from the road for one year, Wheeler said. There is also another reason to recycle besides the most obvious, she said.

“Every time you recycle a plastic bottle, you’re creating U.S. jobs.”

A study done by the Bowen Center for Public Affairs at Ball State University in 2013 showed that an incremental rise in recycling could create 10,000 jobs in Indiana. This is what should motivate students to recycle, said Wheeler.

Recycle Mania is ultimately a personal endeavor, one that aims to instill habits in college students, Wheeler said.

Published on February 4, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Joe: jpleonar@syr.edu