By Bill Shaner, News Staff
A nation-wide recycling competition dubbed Recyclemania starts Sunday, pitting Northeastern against about 470 schools, including Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, MIT and Tufts, said Student Government Association (SGA) Director of Sustainability Initiatives Jessica Dervin-Ackerman. SGA, ResLife Sustainable Service Committee and the Facilities Department are sponsoring the event.’
Students and staff participate simply by recycling.’ The winner of the 10-week competition, which wraps up March 27, will be the school with the highest percentage of recycled waste. In order to participate, students simply should keep their recyclables out of the trash and in Northeastern’s designated recycling bins, Dervin-Ackerman said.
But, Dervin-Ackerman explained, Recyclemania is about more than the competition. She said that while the Northeastern campus currently recycles about 33 percent of its waste,’ SGA aims to increase that to 40 percent.
‘I think if we focus on this internal goal of 40 percent and we reach that, it’ll be huge,’ Dervin-Ackerman said. ‘In a competition of 500 schools it’s not likely that we’ll win, especially since it’s our first yearand the competition is 10 years old. What I’m really aiming for is having people to do better for themselves.’
As a part of the competition, SGA will provide 17 new recycle bins in the Curry Student Center foodcourt. They will be color-coded: black for trash, blue for paper and cardboard and green for plastic, aluminum, and glass. They will be there for the entirety of the competition. Ryan Fox, the’ president of SGA, said he feels it will help students recycle.
‘We at SGA realized that it’s less about adding recycle bins and more about making recycle bins easier to find,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a lot of students who didn’t realize how many bins are around and where the nearest bin is. So we’re piloting this new bin program.’
Fox also said that if the pilot program is a success, SGA will try to streamline the color-coding system.
Dervin-Ackerman will also work on getting faculty to participate, she said.
‘The marketing team and I are going to go around and hit every faculty and staff office,’ she said. ‘A lot of time when people talk about recycling they only talk about the students. But every single bottle, can, piece of paper, cardboard, and compost that’s coming out of our campus gets counted. Anyone that’s on our campus is either helping or hurting us with their recyclables so it’s important to get faculty involved.’
Dervin-Ackerman has actively advocated for sustainability at Northeastern in the past and said that she feels the even will help.
‘I’ve been working on sustainability at Northeastern for three years and the one concern I keep hearing is that we don’t have enough access to recycling and that we want more recycling. So that’s what I’m trying to do with Recyclemania ‘- encourage students to recycle and improve our overall recycled output.’
‘
