乐播传媒

In a national recycling competition among 167 U.S. colleges, 乐播传媒 earned top-30 rankings for successfully minimizing waste and diverting waste from landfills.

, held during February and March, encourages colleges and universities to reduce and reuse their waste.

乐播传媒 placed 12th out of 169 schools nationally for Food Organics, a measure of how much food waste is donated, composted, or otherwise diverted; and 28th out of 171 schools for Diversion, which measures the total waste diverted away from landfills or incineration.

The college鈥檚 EcoReps, students who lead sustainability-related projects on campus, spearheaded 乐播传媒鈥� participation in the competition. But they鈥檙e not resting on their RecycleMania laurels.

鈥淭he results show us what areas we need to work on and more of what we need to do in the future,鈥� says Olivia LaMarche 鈥�20, who is in an EcoRep group focused on waste and recycling. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a really good benchmark.鈥� 聽

RecycleMania encourages recycling across several categories. Three hundred colleges and universities across the United States and Canada, with a total enrollment of 3.6 million, or composted 68.6 million pounds of waste during the Feb. 4鈥揗arch 31 competition.

乐播传媒 and the EcoReps have made concerted efforts in recent years to reduce waste on campus, including installing聽standardized bins for sorting waste,聽eliminating paper coffee cups in Commons, and hosting “No Waste November” events around the ever-popular annual聽Trashion Show.

乐播传媒鈥� strong RecycleMania numbers show that the college is doing well in an area that often proves a tough nut to crack: changing people’s behavior.聽

鈥淲e鈥檝e been putting a lot of thought into waste reduction, such as standardization of bins, and these numbers would suggest that it鈥檚 working,鈥� says Sustainability Manager Tom Twist.

Using receipts from the local companies that take 乐播传媒鈥� waste to area landfills, recycling centers, or composters, the EcoReps were able to measure how many pounds of waste the campus produces and where the waste goes.

But to reduce those numbers as much as possible, the EcoReps had to get other students informed and on board. So they took to Commons in February and March, explaining RecycleMania and asking waste-related trivia questions. Such as:

• Question: How many pounds of food does Commons send to a local pig farmer each week? Answer: 3,900.
  
• Question: Approximately what percentage of waste does 乐播传媒 Dining divert from the landfill? Answer: 80 percent.

The EcoReps also devised a waste-reduction competition among 乐播传媒 residences, with a bagel breakfast as a grand prize. To get dorm-specific waste information, the EcoReps teamed up with an environmental science class to conduct waste audits, sifting through trash and recycling bins to figure out what students throw out and whether they throw it in the right place. (The winners of that competition are yet to be announced).

鈥淚t鈥檚 a great eye-opener for the students to see what was in there, in some cases seeing if it鈥檚 being sorted poorly or not,鈥� Twist says.

The success of the RecycleMania effort, as with every sustainability initiative at 乐播传媒, was due to collaboration across campus. Dining Services has long worked to divert food waste, and the college鈥檚 Facility Services staff helped the EcoReps to make accurate waste audits possible.聽

鈥淭hey adjusted their whole schedule and were able to set aside the waste and recycling for us for that day, which is a pretty big disruption,鈥� Twist said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e grateful that they did that.鈥� 聽