Coming off its most successful finish in eight years of competition, Montgomery County Community College (MCCC) is gearing up for RecycleMania 2016, a national tournament among colleges and universities designed to increase student awareness of campus recycling and waste minimization.
The 2016 competition begins Feb. 7 and continues through April 2.
Historically, MCCC excels in RecycleMania’s Waste Minimization category. The category measures an institution’s total waste, trash and recycling collected during the eight-week competition, and divides it by the number of students, faculty and staff on campus to calculate the amount of waste per person.
In 2015, MCCC collected 8.395 pounds of waste per capita, which was the lowest amount collected among competing Pennsylvania institutions and the sixth lowest among all competing U.S. colleges and universities.
“Less waste per capita means that our efforts to educate the campus community about the importance of reducing and reusing, in addition to recycling, are paying off,” said Jaime Garrido, associate vice president for facilities and construction at MCCC. “Montgomery’s participation in RecycleMania each year is a great way to benchmark how we’re doing.”
During the 2015 RecycleMania tournament, 394 institutions recycled or composted 80.16 million pounds of materials, preventing the release of 129,411 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2E) into the atmosphere.
According to the U.S. EPA’s Waste Reduction Model (WARM), MCCC’s recycling efforts during the competition resulted in a greenhouse gas reduction of 33 MTCO2E, which translates to the energy consumption of three households or the emissions of six cars.
In addition to Waste Minimization, other RecycleMania categories measure the amount of total recyclables, the amount of recyclables per capita and overall recycling rates, among other data.
RecycleMania is made possible through the sponsorship support from the Alcoa Foundation, The Coca Cola Company, Rubbermaid Commercial Products and CyclePoint. Partner organizations include Keep America Beautiful, U.S. EPA Waste Wise, the College and University Recycling Coalition (CURC), the National Wildlife Federation – Campus Ecology and the Food Recovery Network.
To learn more about the RecycleMania 2016 competition, visit recyclemaniacs.org.
