WESTFIELD – Westfield State University is competing for the fourth year in the international RecycleMania Tournament which began the week of February 3 and will continue until the week of March 23 an attempt to defend their title as a top contender in the competition.
RecycleMania is a competition that was created to encourage students and faculty on college campuses to recycle more regularly. The tournament is held over a series of eight weeks and includes universities from all over the United States and Canada.
Last year, 523 colleges throughout the United States and Canada participated with 3.5 million students and staff involved. Westfield State University ranked in the top 10 in the Stephen L. Gaski Per Capita Classic competition, the Recycled Cans and Bottles competition, and the Recycled Paper competition. Statewide, Westfield State ranked first in both The State Paper competition and The State Per Capita competition, and second in The State Can and Bottle competition.
Professor James Rovezzi of the Environmental Science department at Westfield State acts as WSU’s Recycle Coordinator through RecycleMania. He is responsible for sending weekly reports to RecycleMania on the amount of recyclables the university produces every week.
“Every week the maintainers take down the volume of everything we have recycled in each hall so we can do the appropriate weight conversion and send the numbers to RecycleMania,” Rovezzi said. “Then RecycleMania comes out with a weekly report of which schools are recycling the most. They do a breakdown of schools by city, region, and state so you can see each week how you did comparatively statewide and countrywide.”
Alec Cooley, a program manager of RecycleMania, stressed that the competition aspect of RecycleMania is the key to the successful program.
“There are some people who you don’t need to encourage to recycle more frequently, but with others, you have to do it in a way that resonates with them,” Cooley said. “Competition among colleges really motivates people to participate by recycling more, and it also gives the Recycle Coordinator an opportunity to deliver a good environmental message while they have everyone’s attention.”
Rovezzi isn’t too concerned with getting people’s attention. Westfield State’s recycling program has been recognized in the past by the Environmental Protect Agency, winning the Environmental Merit Award for the state a Massachusetts in 2010. Westfield was the only state school to receive this award.
“We try to address the freshmen particularly to get them into the behavioral change of recycling on campus,” Rovezzi said, “which is why we created a team of students called the Green Team. These students come on move-in day and explain the recycling practices to freshmen. Practices like this are what make Westfield’s recycling program so strong and help us place so high during the RecycleMania Competition.”
RecycleMania was launched in 2001 as a friendly challenge between Ohio University and Miami University to increase recycling on their campuses. The contest has expanded from two schools in 2001 to 523 colleges and universities in 2013 spanning 49 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. For complete competition details including a list of participating school, visit the RecycleMania website at http://recyclemania.org.
