‘Mount Trashmore’ helps to raise campus awareness about recycling, daily waste

On Feb. 16, the UCCS Office of Sustainability hosted the annual "Mount Trashmore," a recycling awareness event that occurred between Kraemer Family Library and the Science and Engineering building. From 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Office of Sustainability employees, students and faculty took a mountain of trash gathered by Facility Services and sorted through it to find all the recyclable items.

"Last year at the Mount Trashmore event, we found that 50 percent of what had been thrown in the trash could have been diverted from the landfill and recycled," said Kevin Gilford, a manager at the Office of Sustainability.

"Mount Trashmore" is one of the events planned at UCCS for the nationwide "RecycleMania" event which is a 10-week competition among 630 universities and colleges nationwide. The goal is to see who can reduce the most waste and recycle the most material. Besides UCCS, there are six other schools in Colorado who are competing, including UCCS' neighbors, Colorado College and the United States Air Force Academy. "RecycleMania," as defined on the event's website, www.recyclemania.org, is a friendly competition and a benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to push for reducing waste around their campus communities.

Over a stretch of 10 weeks, schools from all over the nation report recycling and trash data. This information is then ranked in the following five categories: the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita and the highest recycling rate. Each week's results are used to motivate and encourage the campus communities to increase their efforts.

"RecycleMania" was started by students at both Ed Newman of Ohio University and Stacy Edmonds Wheeler of Miami University in February of 2001. The idea stemmed from the surplus of trash and lack of recycling found in the student's residence and dining halls. This influenced both students to create a competition between the two universities to see who could recycle the most and who could use the least amount of trash. The idea gained even more momentum in 2002 and 2003, and currently involves 630 universities, 6 million students and 1.5 million faculty and staff.

At UCCS, "plastic bottles, containers with the number 1-7 on the bottom of them, drink cans, glass bottles, jars, papers, magazines, notebooks, newspapers, cardboard, paperboard and shredded paper" should be recycled, said Gilford, one of the many who spearheaded the "Mount Trashmore" project. "UCCS has a single-stream recycling program, which means that all of the above materials can be placed in a single bin.

Recycling bins are located throughout the campus in every building and in every classroom as well as in numerous outdoor locations," said Gilford. The items that were found to be recyclable were placed inside the El Pomar Center in front of the north-side library doors. Look for many more "RecycleMania" events to come in the next 10 weeks.