Published: February 16, 2011

For the next eight weeks, Fordham University is going head-to-head with 629 schools in a competition: Recyclemania. It’s a tournament to help colleges and universities track their recycling and trash habits.

All schools participating are ranked each week according to the largest amount of total recyclables and largest amount of recyclables per capita, least amount of trash and highest recycling rate.

Schools are classified in either the competition or benchmark division. The benchmark division allows the school to include only a few buildings, rather than the entire University. Fordham is part of the benchmark division, as they are focusing on the trash and recycling specifically in residence halls on both campuses. Other schools across the country are competing, such as Columbia University, St. John’s University and Vassar College.

Various school organizations are involved in promoting and organizingthe competition, primarily custodial services and the Office of Residential Life. The amount of trash and recycling in McMahon Hall at Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) and other residence halls at Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH) will be assembled and collected by custodians.  It will then be counted by Great Forest, an independent company that works with the University’s sustainability team.

At FCLC, McMahon Resident Assistant Francis Pastorelle GSE ’11, spearheaded the organization. He recently became interested in environmental awareness, and decided to use his newfound passion to promote recycling at the University. He organized a student committee for the competition that was recently made a division of FCLC’s Environmental Club.

Leslie Timoney, facilities manager, helped Pastorelle, but she said she wants the competition to be a result of an excited and involved student body. “We’re doing the nuts and bolts, but we need students to take initiative,” Timoney said.

To help spread the word at FCLC, the Recyclemania student committee kicked off the eight-week competition with a luau on Feb. 6. Nearly 50 people attended. The committee is also promoting the competition through weekly events and programs. That includes a weekly environmental documentary that will be shown each Sunday in McMahon, room 109. Other tentative projects include an open mic night and a closing ceremony.

At FCRH, Recyclemania is being handled differently. Elizabeth Amico, assistant director for housing operations at FCRH, said at the Rose Hill campus, it is entirely up to Resident Directors (RDs) and individual Residential Assistants (RAs) in each building to implement the program in the specific halls. A Recyclemania student committee has not been established at the Bronx campus. Amico says this is because, residents living on the Bronx campus are so spread out, it is easier for specific RAs and RDs to promote the competition in their individual halls. FCRH does not currently have an environmental club holding scheduled meetings.

Jen LaValle, FCRH ’11, is an RA in Campbell Hall, one of the apartment residences on campus. She says the RAs in her hall are hosting various programs and dedicating the hall’s bulletin board to the contest. “I think the best thing to do in helping make this program effective is to practice what you preach. I am working hard to recycle the materials I use and to reduce the amount of garbage that I produce,” LaValle said.

For the past two weeks, the University has run a trial period to count the amount of trash and recyclables in each residence hall. According to Timoney, between Jan. 23 and Jan. 29, the 880 residents in McMahon Hall recycled 3.14 pounds of paper and cardboard, and 1.96 pounds of glass, metal and plastic per person. They also threw out 12.81 pounds of trash per person. Pastorelle said these numbers are not extremely impressive or out of the ordinary. “We haven’t really been promoting initiatives yet,” he said. “So it didn’t surprise me.”

Pastorelle said the catch to recycling at Fordham is that residence halls do not pay for post-recycling, a service where garbage and recyclables are sorted professionally to ensure plastic, glass and paper are not thrown out in the trash. Pastorelle says that can hurt Fordham environmentally and in the competition.

“[Even] if the whole floor is exceptional at recycling, if even one person doesn’t do that, facilities has to throw away that entire batch,” he said. “An entire batch of recycling can be lost with one bag of trash. When you face those kinds of odds, it’s going to be challenging.”  He’s hoping programs and events will help people change these habits.

Environmental Club member Erica Hernandez, FCLC ’12, agreed. “It really takes everyone doing their part to make sure we have a good habit of recycling at Fordham, and I don’t think we’re quite there yet. But I hope Recyclemania will help us get there.”

Timoney said while Sodexho services pays for the post-recycling system, the whole point of Recyclemania is to help people make a conscious effort to recycle on their own. “You wouldn’t take a step back[wards],” she said. “That’s not where people are going with recycling.”

Although Pastorelle said it’s unrealistic to think everyone will go out of their way to make sure they are recycling properly, he’s still optimistic. “In every room you’re always going to have somebody. But if we can reach one person in every six-person apartment, then it can be an achievable thing,” Pastorelle said.

The committee is also selling reusable water bottles starting Feb. 15 to help spread the word. In order to receive a free water bottle, students have to go to the RAs’ office in McMahon to receive a voucher. Students then must get that voucher signed by three other students to show that they were informing others about the competition and recycling as a general principle. Water bottles can be purchased for $2.50. Depending on how popular the reusable water bottles are, they could be sold indefinitely through the Office of Residential Life.

“We’ve had programs where literally no one will show up,” Pastorelle said. “That’s not what I want to see happen to this. [Recycling] is such an important thing, I feel.”

According to the Recyclemania website, the competition was started in 2001 by a student at Ohio University and a student at Miami University who wanted to increase recycling awareness at each of their universities. Ever since then, the number of universities involved has rapidly increased and has now become a competition that reaches many major colleges and universities in every state.

But here at a smaller school like FCLC, Pastorelle said it’s still possible to make a difference. “I feel as though it is worthwhile making those kinds of efforts because you can see those results. As small as McMahon [Hall] and Fordham are, it still sells a powerful message…That we’re able to make some sort of change on campus.”

The University has not established a numerical goal of paper, glass, metal and plastic it hopes students will recycle for the competition.