Syracuse University participated in 2017 RecycleMania, a waste reduction and recycling competition among colleges and universities, managed by Keep America Beautiful.
While participating in several categories, looking only at New York state colleges and universities who participated in this competition, SU ranked first in the Gorilla Prize and second in the Per Capita Classic out of all competing schools located in New York state for the University’s participation in RecycleMania.
Competing colleges and universities are ranked according to how much recycling and trash they collect over two months. Each week, Sustainability Management gathered the information and submitted the amounts of recycling, trash and food waste to be ranked with other colleges and universities.
The Gorilla Prize recognizes schools with the highest gross tonnage of combined paper, cardboard, and bottles and cans. Syracuse University came in at No. 1 out of 19 in New York State and No. 12 out of 214 nationally with 901,280 lbs. of recyclables.
Syracuse University ranked second out of the 19 participating schools in New York state and 31 out of 245 nationally in the Per Capita Classic with 23.78 pounds recycled per person on campus, which measures the weight of recyclable divided by the campus population.
With a recycling rate of 47.1 percent, Syracuse University ranked third out of 18 in New York state and 52nd out of 190 nationally in the Diversion category, which combines trash, recyclables and food organics to determine the school’s recycling rate as a percentage of overall waste. Syracuse University performed almost 1 percent better than the previous year.
The 2017 tournament featured 320 schools participating from 46 states in the United States, the District of Columbia and Canada, with an enrollment of 4.1 million students. Between the Feb. 5 kickoff and the final recycling weigh-in on April 1, participating schools recycled or composted 69.9 million pounds of waste, preventing the release of 77,791 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2E) into the atmosphere, which is equivalent to preventing the annual emissions from 16,400 cars.
Complete results for these and other categories can be found at https://recyclemaniacs.org/scoreboard/current-results.
To learn more about RecycleMania, please visit https://recyclemaniacs.org.
For more information on sustainability and recycling efforts, please visit http://sustainability.syr.edu, follow @SustainableSU on Twitter, or check out the Syracuse University Sustainability Facebook page.
Story by Jiangyifan Ke, public relations intern with Sustainability Management
