Rowan Cleans Up at RecycleMania
July 6, 2006

Rowan University was recently awarded third place in the nationwide Waste Minimization competition during RecycleMania 2006, a national competition among colleges and universities.

During the competition, the Rowan Recycling Team focused on reducing waste. They used fliers and ran an advertising campaign in the student newspaper to encourage waste minimization.

During the 10-week competition, it was calculated on average that each Rowan student, staff and faculty member produced 36.37 pounds of waste, a low enough number to earn the university third place.

"We recycled 40,673 pounds of material in just 10 weeks," said Rowan University Director of Facilities, Resource Management John Imperatore, PE . "Imagine what else we could accomplish during an entire year of recycling activities. We need to build upon this success."

RecycleMania is a competition among university recycling programs in the United States. Over a 10-week period, schools competed in different contests to see which institution could collect the largest amount of recyclables, the least amount of trash and the highest recycling rate. All participating schools were required to report measurements on a weekly basis in pounds. The university that recycled the most won. RecycleMania 2006 included nearly 100 participating schools from 33 states across the country, according to the event website.

RecycleMania is endorsed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WasteWise program, the National Recycling Coalition’s College and University Recycling Council (CURC) and the National Wildlife Federation’s Campus Ecology Program.