U. trumps Ivies in recycling contest

Princeton placed 22nd out of 201 universities in this year's nationwide RecycleMania competition, ahead of all other participating Ivy League schools. The "grand champion" was Cal State San Marcus, followed by Rutgers.

The University had a 30.2 percent recycling rate, which indicates the weight of recycled materials divided by the sum of all trash and recyclables.

"The fact that we're up there in the top 10 percent is very good," Greening Princeton member Jeffrey Dwoskin GS said. "The most important thing is to raise awareness, and this happens when students see our rankings. It's a really friendly competition. It's meant to get the word out."

In order to qualify for the championship round, universities had to enter two competitions within RecycleMania. Princeton participated in the "Per Capita Classic," in which schools competed to collect the most recyclables per person, and the "Waste Minimization round," in which schools competed to see which could produce the least amount of solid waste.

In both competitions, the recycling and waste were tracked over a 10-week period. While the University's total recycling has gone down slightly from last year's, its consumption has decreased more significantly, meaning the University is recycling a higher proportion of its waste.

"We have high recycling rates, but we also have high waste rates," Greening Princeton co-president Mark Smith '09 said. "It would be a whole lot better not to waste as much and recycle more."

To raise awareness throughout the RecycleMania period, Greening Princeton members set up displays that would be noticeable to students. They set up a tent on Frist Campus Center's North Lawn containing the daily volume of improperly discarded recyclables on campus. Three plastic boxes were placed inside Frist and filled with refuse to represent the recycling rates of Princeton, Harvard and Yale. The progress of the race was also posted on the Point website.

"I'd like to think there's a rising sense of environmentalism," Smith said. "I'd like to think that displays on campus have made the difference that we had this year."

To create a level playing field among universities, many regulations governed the competition. When registering, schools provided the number of faculty and staff on campus in order to develop an equivalent population figure among schools. RecycleMania also defined which materials counted as recyclables, including paper, cardboard, glass and aluminum cans in the category.

During the competition, Princeton and all other registered universities were required to measure all solid waste and recyclables and report their measurements to RecycleMania on a weekly basis. In order to get the weights, the University weighed the trucks that transported the waste and recyclables.