The entire MIT community will have a chance to compete this year as the campus squares off against others around the country for a national recycling competition.
This is the fourth year that MIT will participate in the national RecycleMania contest, but this year the rules were changed to include the entire campus and not just campus housing.
MIT's recycling rate -- the amount of recycled material collected as a percentage of total waste collected -- has hovered around 40 percent for the past few years, a great improvement from 11 percent back in 2000. The contest aims to drive the rate even higher. It was created as a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs, to promote waste reduction activities on campus.
The contest runs for 10 weeks, Jan. 18-March 28, and is supported by the EPA and the National Recycling Coalition. Additional information about recycling at MIT is available at http://web.mit.edu/facilities/environmental/recycling.html and at http://web.mit.edu/workinggreen/.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 11, 2009 (download PDF).
