University of Richmond
ER-2: Student Sustainability Outreach Campaign

RecycleMania is a nationwide competition between universities and colleges to reduce waste and improve campus recycling rates. As a campus-wide campaign, RecycleMania includes the entire student body, faculty, and staff. Beginning in February, the competition lasts for eight weeks. Every week, new rankings are released that rank the competing universities and colleges within their respective states, and throughout the country in categories such as bottles and cans, paper, cardboard, and waste minimization. During the competition, the Sustainability Office holds various events: a student waste audit to promote recycling awareness and education, an e-waste recycling event for the campus community, and free give-a-ways to students using reusable mugs. Campus Conservation Nationals is a nationwide electricity and water reduction competition on college and university campuses. Institutions strive to achieve the greatest amount of energy reduction within their student residence halls over a three week period between February and April. The University of Richmond measures energy consumption using Lucid Building Dashboards. To generate enthusiasm about the competition, URs USGBC Students group went to multiple residence halls to speak about the competition and introduce the energy dashboard to students. To kick off the beginning of Campus Conservation Nationals and RecycleMania, a model residence hall room was set up in a public space at the University. The model room was equipped with numerous items exemplifying how easy it was to become personally sustainable. Some of these items included environmentally friendly products, a drying rack, CFL light bulbs, and organic cotton sheets. At the kick-off event, students were asked to sign a card or use Facebook to pledge their participation in the competition.

Both of these campaigns aim to foster behavior change by educating students about recycling and personal energy consumption reduction. Positive, lasting impact can be seen by comparing RecycleMania results from 2010 and 2011. In 2010, the recycling rate was 16.59%, the university ranked 5th in bottles and cans recycling in Virginia. In 2011, the recycling rate was 20.37%, the university ranked 1st in bottles and cans recycling in Virginia. In 2012, the recycling rate fell to 15.70%, but the University reduced its overall waste from 80.38 lbs/person in 2011 to 67.14 lbs/person in 2012. The improvements in these various categories show recycling and waste reduction improvements on campus. To help spread awareness about Recylemania, the Sustainability Office and students conducted a waste audit on the main campus forum and held an E-Waste collection event for personal electronics. Campus Conservation Nationals: Dorm Warms aims to reduce campus residence hall energy consumption. For the 2012 competition, the Sustainability Office has included the University Forest Apartments which house many of the upperclassman residents. The apartments are individually metered, so students collected data weekly from the meters. In the 2012 competition, the University saved 46,679 kwh compared to the baseline. For the 2012 competition, UR was one the top 10 schools during CCN with the greatest electricity use reduction. As a result, we earned 200,000 kwh worth of RECs from Sterling Planet.