RecycleMania is returning to NSU for its fifth year. This event promotes environmentally conscious behavior on campus. RecycleMania is a nationwide competition that promotes sustainability and environmentally conscious behavior. RecycleMania lasts for eight weeks, starting on Feb. 4, as colleges and universities compete to collect as much recyclable waste as possible.
“Using fair and friendly competition, RecycleMania provides tools and opportunities that inspire, empower and mobilize colleges and universities to benchmark and improve efforts to reduce or eliminate waste” is the purpose of RecycleMania, according to the organization’s mission statement.
“We collect as much recycling as possible while also reducing our waste and we want to be the top recyclers in the nation,” said Megan Knights, the president of Green Sharks and the student sustainability coordinator. “Last year, we came in around 70th [in the competition] but that was a major improvement from the year before that. So we’ve been increasing our recycling rates by about 10% consistently and we want to continue that trend. To raise awareness for recycling on campus along with reducing our trash amounts throughout the NSU community.”
Throughout the eight weeks, Green Sharks will host events once a week, more information about this will be included with their revised calendar on SharkFins. The held events, such as a Sustainability 101 lecture, will fit with the message of encouraging recycling on campus. The speaker for the Sustainability 101 lecture will be from facilities management on campus. The recycling processes at NSU will be discussed. This will take place in the Alvin Sherman Library, with more information on this to come.
“NSU struggles with recycling, there is a lot of room for improvement. I heard there was a rumor going around that people don’t believe that the janitorial staff is recycling. That’s incorrect, we do as much as we can to promote [recycling] with our janitorial staff and our students, we just need to make sure that we are recycling accurately, meaning [that we correctly dispose of products like] plastics, paper, cardboard and metals,” according to Knights.
NSU practices single-stream recycling, meaning that all recyclable materials are processed together. “We really want to raise awareness of recycling overall and make sure that people understand that just one little thing makes a big difference. Like recycling your plastic bottles, recycling even just your paper when you’re done with it after the semester is over. Just anything makes a big difference on marine pollution and the environment and reducing our carbon footprint overall.”
Green Sharks are looking for volunteers for this event. Anyone interested in volunteering should contact Megan Knight at mk1255@mynsu.nova.edu for more information. The calendar for the second month of RecycleMania events will be released in the coming weeks.
