RecycleMania is a 10-week national recycling competition between universities, which started January 20th and runs through March 30th.

OSU is competing to recycle the most both nationally and in the Civil War with the University of Oregon. As of this blog post, we are leading Oregon 3.05 to 2.74 lbs. per person!

Calendar

Events and other opportunities are offered every week; here’s the line-up for the next couple weeks:

• Res. Hall Eco-Challenge Month: February 1 – March 1, all res. halls. Residents compete to conserve the most by recycling and saving energy!
• OSUsed Store Food Drive Discount Sales: Wednesdays, February 13, 20 and 27, 12-3 pm, OSUsed Store, 644 SW 13th St. Bring 1-2 food donation items for 10% off or 3+ items for 25% your purchase!
• Recycled Craft ‘n’ Care: Tuesday, February 12, 5:00 – 8:00 pm, Java II (Valley Library). Create recycled decorations to donate to charity, and recycled cards for your loved ones! Join on Facebook.
• Worm Bin Workshop: Monday, February 25, 3:30 – 6:30 pm, Student Sustainability Center, 738 SW 15th St. Learn how to compost your food scraps with worms and leave with a ready-to-go bin! Register here by Sunday, February 24th.
• Save the date and save your materials: Film Plastic & E-Waste Collection: Wednesday, March 6 at 9:00 am-7:30 pm and Thursday-Wednesday, March 7-8 and 11-13 at 9:00 am-4:00 pm. Recycling/Surplus warehouse, 644 SW 13th St.

Check out the full RecycleMania calendar here. You can also participate by throwing away less and recycling more.

Happy RecycleMania!

The first person to to answer correctly will win an OSU reusable spork like this one!

Submit your answer here (“Leave a Reply,” below), on our Facebook page or tweet it to @osurecycling on Twitter. Only one guess per person, please.

Question of the Week:

What are the two main service options we provide to departments who would like to compost in their building?

Answer

Here are the two main options, plus a third:

1. Join the collection route, in which building occupants are responsible for dumping their organic waste into an outdoor compost cart that we service.
2. Receive and maintain a worm bin, provided to people who want to manage their own compost and keep the finished product.
3. Collect your organic waste in your break room and dump it at a nearby compost drop point.

Learn more on our department compost webpage and our recent blog post.

Staff & Faculty

1. Sign-up for composting in your building

There are two main options for departmental composting:

• Join the collection route, in which building occupants are responsible for dumping their organic waste into an outdoor compost cart that we service.
• Receive and maintain a worm bin, provided to people who want to manage their own compost and keep the finished product.

Visit our department composting page for more information about the program.  To sign-up for composting in your department, fill out our online department compost request form.

2. Reach out to other departments

Are there other departments in your building who have a separate break room?  They might be interested in composting as well.  We encourage you to reach out to staff and faculty members that you know, in your building and elsewhere on campus.

3. Become a Sustainability Advocate

If you’d like to encourage composting and sustainability campus-wide, you can join the Sustainability Advocates program.

Students

1. Talk to your academic department

Is your academic department composting?  You can check our list of current department composting participants.  Faculty and staff are often receptive to students’ suggestions, so speak up!

2. Talk to staff

Do you work on campus?  You can encourage your department to start composting (see #1 under Staff & Faculty for how).

3. Live in Cauthorn, Halsell, West or Wilson Hall?

If you live in one of the four residence halls listed above, you can participate in the new compost pilot by signing up with your Eco-Rep! If you don’t know who he/she is, talk to your RD. More information and updates are on the program’s Facebook page.

For information about our department composting program, visit our website.

Background

RecycleMania is a 10-week competition for U.S. college and university recycling programs to see who can recycle the most! OSU competes both nationally, as well as locally in the RecycleMania Civil War, created by OSU and the UO in 2010 (which OSU has won three years running). Our trophy is pictured at right.

Campus Recycling partners with other organizations on campus with the goal of offering at least one activity per week – activities meant to educate and excite OSU about recycling so we can boost our numbers both during the competition and year-round!

Possible Activities

What activities would you like to see happen? Below is a list of ideas we are considering. Leave a comment below with your opinion on these ideas and to add your own!

• A display in the MU Quad representing how much trash we produce at OSU, along with informative displays about recycling and the competition.

A RecycleMania 2011 display demonstrated how much trash OSU produced every six hours – roughly four 6-yard dumpsters.

• 

  This “igloo” is the sculpture created by volunteers for the 2012 competition. Click for more photos.

  Construct a sculpture out or reused materials, as we have done the past two years, this one made out of film plastic in the shape of a jellyfish. Use as a visual and educational tool about plastics recycling and pollution.

• Monthly Repair Fairs similar to those offered fall term.
• A reused craft night with various projects, geared toward Valentine’s Day gifts.
• An e-waste recycling collection event.
• A film plastic recycling collection event.
• A dumpster audit to see what we’re throwing away on campus.
• A residence hall competition based on per capita recycling, for 3-4 weeks.
• Special OSUsed Store sales.

Your Ideas?

Do you have feedback on any of these ideas or have your own to contribute? We are especially interested in what activities you would like to see offered that relate to composting.

Please comment below!

The first person to to answer correctly will win an OSU reusable cold cup like this one!

Submit your answer here (“Leave a Reply,” below), on our Facebook page or tweet it to @osurecycling on Twitter. Only one guess per person, please.

Question of the Week:

True or false? Your Thanksgiving turkey carcass is accepted in your Corvallis curbside compost cart.

 Answer

True! In Corvallis city limits, you can place all food waste, including animal products, in your curbside Mixed Organics cart (yard debris cart). Learn more here.

The first person to to answer correctly, or get closest to the answer by Friday at 4:00 pm, will win an OSU reusable cold cup like this one!

Submit your answer here (“Leave a Reply,” below), on our Facebook page or tweet it to @osurecycling on Twitter. Only one guess per person, please.

Question of the Week:

What percent of the 2012 OSU New Student Picnic waste was diverted from the landfill (i.e. recycled and composted)?

Hints: The answer is rounded to the nearest whole number. A recycling rate like this is calculated by adding the recycling and compost weights and dividing that by the total weight of all waste (recycling, compost and trash). While we try to reduce waste as much as possible at this annual event, it is not yet a zero waste event.

This answer hasn’t been released anywhere yet, so it’s largely a guessing game. Good luck!

ANSWER

Congrats to Lexie Merrill, who won our Question of the Week. Lexie came closest with a guess of 90% on Facebook, when we in fact recycled a whopping 97% of the waste! Congrats Lexie!

Tune in every Thursday for a chance to win prizes throughout the academic year!

Worm bins are a tidy, easy and inexpensive way to compost your food waste.

Do you want to compost at home or work but don’t have outdoor space or the know-how? If yes, then creating a worm compost bin may be the answer for you. It takes little space, is simple to use and can be made for little or no cost.

To get you started, check out this week’s Wisdom of the Week, “Composting with Worms,” a PDF publication from OSU Extension.

In this guide, learn about:

• What is composting with worms? (p. 1)
• The Worm Bin (p. 2)
• The Worms (p. 6)
• Bedding (p. 7)
• Food (p. 8)
• Harvesting the Compost  (p. 9)
• More About Worm Health (p. 11)
• Troubleshooting Common Worm Bin Problems (p. 12)

Bonus wisdom: if you work for a department at OSU, you can get a worm bin for your office, free of charge!

This post is part of our Wisdom of the Week series, furthering your knowledge about waste reduction every Wednesday during summer 2012.

1. paper cupcake cups
2. hair from your hairbrush
3. cotton clothing
4. used matches
5. latex balloons

Answer: All of them, and more!

Check out this week’s Wisdom of the Week, “75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn’t,” from the TLC website.

Is there anything on the list that you want to start composting? Please share by commenting below!

This post is part of our Wisdom of the Week series, furthering your knowledge about waste reduction every Wednesday during summer 2012.

All squeezed out. Now what?

So, this week’s Wisdom of the Week is the article 10 Reuse Ideas for Food Scraps from Earth911, a website dedicated to providing people across the U.S. with recycling info and resources.

From making tea to concocting household cleaning supplies, this article provides 10 unique-yet-practical ideas that you can get started on today! Click the image below to go to the article.

This post is part of our Wisdom of the Week series, furthering your knowledge about waste reduction every Wednesday during summer 2012.

1. AMERICA RECYCLES DAY

Hosted an event on this nationally recognized day that focused on collecting hard-to-recycle items, and was open to both the on- and off-campus community. In just four hours, we collected 3,000 pounds of electronics, electronic storage media and batteries, plus 30 cubic yards of Styrofoam and film plastic.

2. MASTER RECYCLER CLASS

Again co-taught the Linn-Benton Master Recycler class with Allied Waste, which trained more participants than in any year since the program began in 2007.

3. RES. HALL MOVE-OUT DONATION DRIVE

Exceeded our 10-ton goal, collecting 20,122 pounds of donations that went to local nonprofits rather than the landfill.

4. NEW REVENUE

Began partnering with the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative to separate and redeem bottles and cans with redemption value, bringing in a new source of revenue for our program.

5. DA VINCI DAYS

At the 2011 festival, through collaboration with da Vinci Days staff, Allied Waste, and community volunteers, 87% of the trash was diverted either to recycling or compost.  This was yet another decrease in trash since the festival waste reduction initiative began in 2010; over the first two years of the initiative, per capita trash has decreased by 80%.

6. DEPARTMENT COMPOST

Spent two terms tracking weights from our department compost collection route, then began developing a model for instituting composting in buildings across campus in the future.

Some of the e-waste collected during RecycleMania.

7. RECYCLEMANIA

Again sponsored OSU’s participation in the national RecycleMania competition, and partnered with many other campus departments and student organizations to put on events throughout the competition. Highlights from this year include:

• 6% increase in per capita recycling over 2011,
• 49,000 pounds of electronics collected for recycling in just one month, earning OSU a 5th place ranking in the national e-waste competition,
• 5,000 gallons of Styrofoam collected in one week
• 1st place ranking among Oregon universities, and the Civil War Champion title for the third year.

8. EARTH WEEK

Again lead the annual Earth Week celebration, and partnered with over 50 organizations to put on the 12th Annual Earth Week Community Fair.

Earth Week Community Fair

9. EXPANDED OUR REACH

We increased public awareness of our program and recycling by:

• Increased our media presence (for example, by being featured in many front page articles in the Corvallis Gazette-Times),
• Coordinated more educational events throughout the academic year, and
• Expanded our social media followers and engagement by launching a new blog in July 2011, creating our own educational videos and YouTube channel, and growing our fan base on Facebook and Twitter.

10. NEW VOLUNTEER TEAM

Developed a volunteer team that works on outreach and events throughout the year, creating experiential learning and leadership opportunities for OSU students.

A portion of the volunteer team, with the Styrofoam igloo they constructed for RecycleMania.

Thank you to everyone who made 2011-12 such a great year!