University of Richmond
EN-5: 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 each February, the competition lasts for eight weeks. Every week, competing universities and colleges are ranked within their respective states in categories such as bottles and cans, paper, cardboard, and waste minimization. During the competition, the Office for Sustainability holds outreach events: a student-driven waste audit to promote recycling awareness and education, an e-waste recycling event for the campus community, and prizes to students using reusable mugs and reusable to-go containers. 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, student energy ambassadors speak to the students living in residence halls about the competition and how to use the energy dashboard. To launch the Campus Conservation Nationals and RecycleMania campaigns, a model residence hall room was created. 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 pledge their participation in the competition and to sign up for the Green Room Program.

Both RecycleMania and Campus Conservation Nationals foster behavior change by educating students about recycling and personal energy consumption reduction. Positive, lasting impacts can be seen by comparing RecycleMania results from 2013 and 2014. In 2013, the recycling rate was 10.4% and 8.573lb/capita. In 2014, the recycling rate was 26.98% and 22.723/capita. The improvements in these various categories show recycling and waste reduction improvements on campus. We participate in Campus Conservation Nationals with a goal of reducing campus residence hall energy consumption. For the 2015 competition, the Office for Sustainability 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. Beyond recycling rates and energy conservation, the leadership and education opportunities presented by the competitions pay great dividends. Student volunteers spread awareness about Dorm Wars, conduct a public waste audit to educate students on waste diversion opportunities, and hold an E-Waste collection event for personal electronics. They also hosted a clothing swap and Building Captains reached out to their peers living in their dorm. The organizational and even planning skills required to make these events a success are transferable to many career needs.

The Kill the Cup 2015 University Challenge was a six-week nationwide campaign that encouraged students, staff, and faculty across the country to reduce waste from disposable coffee cups. University of Richmond was one of 16 universities that competed in October and November of 2015. The competition rewarded the university that served the highest percentage of drinks in reusable cups at participating coffee shops. The student group GreenUR led a grassroots campaigns to encourage environmentally friendly behavior on campus. Teams competed for social impact grants to fund sustainability projects on their own campus.

The results for Kill the Cup indicate that UR had the 2nd highest participation rate for social media/awareness. Participation for this part of the competition was assessed by the number of selfies submitted through the Kill the Cup app. The University of Richmond came in second in our category. All of the participating schools had at least a 2 percent reusable cup rate, beyond Starbucks' reported rate. Overall, the 16 universities saved 267,000 cups from being used.

Greeks Going Green, a sustainability organization on campus focused on outreach to Greek Life, partners with the Dining Hall on campus to host "Trayless Fridays." On designated Fridays, students are encouraged not to use trays in order to reduce the amount of waste the Dining Hall produces. Students work to educate the campus community about the benefits of this program. Through food audits, it was shown that Trayless Fridays reduce the amount of waste by almost 2/3 per person/meal. Additionally, Greeks Going Green hosted a Terracycle campaign to collect empty plastic bottles to donate to a charity through Terracycle. Through this campaign, UR was able to upcycle a substantial number of bottles.

http://www.killthecup.org/university-challenge.html