2008 Woodie Awards
Trinity strives to go green
Recyclemania competition encourages campus awareness of waste reduction
Jordan Krueger
Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: Trinity Life
This spring semester at Trinity, green is in. After years of irresponsible waste and energy management, Trinity students, faculty and staff have finally taken initiative in several campus programs to reduce waste, re-use renewable resources and recycle.
Student awareness of waste reduction has risen recently with the commencement of Recyclemania.
"Recyclemania is a 10-week long, nationwide college competition," said Sophomore Molly Ellis, an active member in Students Organized for Sustainability (SOS). "There are different sections of it … and the one that Trinity is participating in is called the waste minimization competition."
For this competition, Trinity reports the amount of waste produced plus the amount of recycled material, and divides that total by the amount of students or faculty involved in that residence or department to get a waste per capita figure. Ellis then reports that number to Recyclemania weekly, and Recyclemania then ranks Trinity in comparison to other schools.
"What Trinity is doing in the spirit of that is, for the last eight weeks of this competition, we're holding an annual res. hall against res. hall competition," Ellis said. "Then we're going to post those results in Mabee [Dining Hall] about every two weeks to see who the leader is … and at each of those two-week sections, the leading dorm in waste minimization will get some sort of food prize donated by dining services."
This competition began Monday and will last through April 15.
"It's not necessarily promoting people to recycle more than it is promoting people to reduce more overall," Ellis said.
To reduce waste, Ellis suggested avoiding to-go containers, printing paper on both sides and using re-usable containers for drinks, such as Nalgene bottles for water or thermoses for coffee. Many of these suggestions save money as well as waste.
Both Physical Plant and custodial services are supporting Trinity's involvement in Recyclemania. At the moment, custodial services is simply counting the amount of filled trash bags as they collect the waste from each building at Trinity. Since the trash bags issued at Trinity are all the same size, the bag counts can be estimated into total weight.
Student awareness of waste reduction has risen recently with the commencement of Recyclemania.
"Recyclemania is a 10-week long, nationwide college competition," said Sophomore Molly Ellis, an active member in Students Organized for Sustainability (SOS). "There are different sections of it … and the one that Trinity is participating in is called the waste minimization competition."
For this competition, Trinity reports the amount of waste produced plus the amount of recycled material, and divides that total by the amount of students or faculty involved in that residence or department to get a waste per capita figure. Ellis then reports that number to Recyclemania weekly, and Recyclemania then ranks Trinity in comparison to other schools.
"What Trinity is doing in the spirit of that is, for the last eight weeks of this competition, we're holding an annual res. hall against res. hall competition," Ellis said. "Then we're going to post those results in Mabee [Dining Hall] about every two weeks to see who the leader is … and at each of those two-week sections, the leading dorm in waste minimization will get some sort of food prize donated by dining services."
This competition began Monday and will last through April 15.
"It's not necessarily promoting people to recycle more than it is promoting people to reduce more overall," Ellis said.
To reduce waste, Ellis suggested avoiding to-go containers, printing paper on both sides and using re-usable containers for drinks, such as Nalgene bottles for water or thermoses for coffee. Many of these suggestions save money as well as waste.
Both Physical Plant and custodial services are supporting Trinity's involvement in Recyclemania. At the moment, custodial services is simply counting the amount of filled trash bags as they collect the waste from each building at Trinity. Since the trash bags issued at Trinity are all the same size, the bag counts can be estimated into total weight.
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