EMU Ranks High in National Recycling Contest

EMU's Recycling Coordinator Jonathan Lantz-Trissel entered the competition but told no one on campus, foregoing the usual internal media blitz that accompanies Recyclemania competitions across the country. Pictured next to Lantz-Trissel is his bicycle-powered recyclables collector. (Photo by Jon Styer)

EMU placed ahead of larger universities - like Yale, Portland State University and University of Colorado at Boulder - in a national recycling competition this spring.

"Recyclemania" organizes an annual competition across the country to determine which school can reduce, reuse and recycle the most campus waste during a 10-week period from January 27 to April 5.

The Washington, D.C.-based non-profit wrapped up its 2008 college recycling contest this year with more than 58 million pounds of recyclables and organics recovered from 400 colleges and universities across the country.

EMU placed 11th in the "waste minimization" category and 18th in the "grand champion" category.

Low-Key Success

Ironically, the success came with no prodding from EMU recycling coordinator Jonathan Lantz-Trissel.

"Other campuses do a lot of raucous competition between dorms or other groups to generate recycling interest," he explained. "But I didn't even let people know I was entering the contest. I knew I couldn't process any more material than people were already generating."

That is a remarkable testament to EMU's level of awareness about sustainable living, said C. Eldon Kurtz, director of EMU physical plant and supervisor of Lantz-Trissel.

"It's great that we placed so well without making an extra effort to get people to participate. That shows recycling efforts are already integral to how we operate and who we are," Kurtz added. Read more about EMU's efforts to 'Be Green'...

State Level Winners as Well

In addition to the national-level accolades, EMU was named College and University Recycling Program of the Year by the Virginia Recycling Association in April, beating out the University of Virginia.

Both of these recognitions "just reinforce my thinking that it's the little things that each person does that make a big change," said Lantz-Trissel, a 2000 EMU graduate.

"We placed better than I expected in Recyclemania," he continued. "I think it shows that, much like our energy use, there is a fairly wide-spread awareness of environmental concerns at the individual level here on EMU campus.

"Now I'm even more excited to build on the momentum we have," said Lantz-Trissel. "There's always more we can do. Next I really want to make more progress on composting dining hall waste and supporting efforts to eat more locally grown food."

Lantz-Trissel offered his congratulations to all the campuses that participated in these competitions, adding: "We want to celebrate and support everybody's efforts to produce less waste."

More information about the national Recyclemania competition and other college scores is available at www.recyclemaniacs.org