Saturday, February 22, 2014

Utah State brings Recyclemania to Logan

The Utah State University Sustainability Council is hosting Recyclemania on campus through March 29 in hopes of encouraging students to increase their recycling efforts throughout the year.

“Recyclemania is a competition for university recycling programs to promote waste reduction through activities on campus,” said Alexi Lamm, the sustainability coordinator at USU. “This is our fourth year competing in it.”

Colleges across the United States and Canada report the amount of recycling and trash collected each week for a two-month period and are then ranked in multiple categories. In 2013, 523 colleges recycled over 90 million pounds of waste.

Utah State is adding extra incentives to participate this year by giving away weekly prizes to students who post pictures of themselves recycling on Instagram using #USUdontbetrashy.

“We have seen a 27 percent increase of recycling during the contest,” Lamm said. “We are hopeful this year for 33 percent. Not much was being done within the council when I first got here, but we quickly gained momentum and finally gave ourselves a name on campus.”

Utah State hired Lamm in October 2012. Since her arrival, the club and council have each doubled their membership.

“The Students for Sustainability Club members are all students, whereas the council is the big picture with faculty and staff members,” said Amber O’Quinn, a sophomore intern on the council. “We’ve become more student-focused, and have been pushing for more student involvement.”


Nikki VanLith, Janessa Knowles, Claire Hubbard, LeAnn Fox, Alex Taylor and Logan Jones contributed to this report.

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