RecycleMania starts at Penn, to maintain awareness about recycling

PENNSYLVANIA, USA: The recycling competition held annually between 600 colleges and universities in the United states and Canada has officially started on February 5th and will go up to 31st of March.

Penn takes part in the RecycleMania, the two month long competition. The challenge is to maintain awareness about recycling among the students, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported.

Schools and administrative centres of the university will also take part in the competition. They look forward to increase the recycling rate of the campus from 29% to 32% this year.

Dan Garafalo, environment sustainability coordinator said,"We're confident that we're always going to have an improvement because of our efforts, but also because of our students."

As part of the RecycleMania, the School of Engineering and Applied Science will expand its battery and computer recycling program. The Perelman School of Medicine will offer a textbook-recycling program at the Biomedical Research Building.

Gregory College House will feature posters that keep track of how much recycling has been done.

Julian Goresko, Sustainability Student Outreach Associate for the Green Campus Partnership, said,""In addition to having social events, at least half of the competition is our effort in just teaching people about recycling."

In addition to the events, new initiatives are also taken by the Eco-reps, students that form the main voices of the program. An example is a program "upcycling" with Terracycle, a company that takes non recyclable materials like juice pouch and makes things like bag from it.