RecycleMania 2009!

Choose to Reduce, There's No Excuse!

Want to beat other colleges and universities from across the country?! Well, your chance is here.

This winter term, the University of Michigan is once again participating in RecycleMania! RecycleMania is a 10 week competition among colleges and universities across the U.S. to see which school can collect the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, or have the highest recycling rate over the course of the competition.

This year's competition runs from January 18th to March 28th, 2009. UM will be participating in the Per Capita Classic, Waste Minimization, Gorilla Prize, and Grand Champion competitions. The Per Capita Classic will see who can recycle the highest amount per capita and the Waste Minimization competition will see who can produce the least amount of waste, trash AND recycling included. This emphasizes source reduction and reuse over recycling. The creation of less material that needs to be disposed of saves money, energy, and natural resources. The Gorilla Prize measures the total tonnage of recyclables collected. The Grand Champion competition will see who has the highest recycling rate.

Last year we did a great job! For RecycleMania 2008, UM finished 34th in Waste Minimization, 4th in Gorilla Prize, and 29th in the Grand Champion competition. This is great, but we can do even better this year! This means we need your help! UM's Waste Management Services is enlisting the help of all students, faculty, and staff on the Ann Arbor Campus to reduce their waste and recycle the rest as much as possible during this competition (and all the time of course!). See our Waste Prevention Tips for ideas on how you can reduce your wastes and work and at home.

Week Nine Results Are In!

UM has finished the final week of RecycleMania! UM students, faculty, and staff did a great job of reducing their waste and recycling the rest. After the ten weeks of the competition, we finished 90th out of 206 schools in the Grand Champion Competition. We did good job, but we can do better next year! For more information and a full list of rankings, go to www.recyclemaniacs.org.

In the Gorilla Prize competition (total recycling tonnage) UM finished in fifth place with 744,529 lbs. of recyclables!

For more RecycleMania information, visit www.recyclemaniacs.org. We will also be holding the Third Annual Recycling Champions Building Competition!

Want to test your RecycleMania knowledge? Take this quiz.

Kick off RecycleMania and 2009 in true recycling fashion with this 2009 Rufus the Recycler Calendar!