It's that time of the year again: RecycleMania is upon us and cannot be cheated. Much like Santa Claus' elves, Tufts Recycles! interns have been working hard behind the scenes and know when you've been naughtily forgoing the rules of recycling or nicely separating your paper, plastic, glass and trash. By looking through your trash, we've put together preliminary grades for each dorm and small house, a space holder to gauge how you're doing pre-competition. But for the next eight weeks, it's on, for real. It's RecycleMania 2010.
What is RecycleMania, you may ask, being a freshman, oblivious sophomore or completely clueless junior or senior. To save you the embarrassment of ignorance in the face of frat-party small talk involving the competition, I'll tell you, but after this, the responsibility is in your hands to self-inform and act as the RecycleMania-friendly world citizen you are.
RecycleMania is the annual spring semester competition between colleges and universities across the United States to promote waste reduction and recycling on campus. Schools report recycling and trash data and are thus ranked according to who collects the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables and the least amount of trash per capita: in other words the highest recycling rate. As the data of each week are posted, students watch how results fluctuate. At Tufts, we will continue to grade each place of residence in rotation — dorms and small houses in separate groups — so that each dorm or house is graded twice. Not only is the competition stirred up between schools, then, but your own good name as "place of residence with the best recycling at Tufts" is at stake.
The preliminary house grades are as follows: 12 Dearborn has an A-; Carpenter House, B-; 92 Curtis, C+; 94 Curtis, D; 176 Curtis, A+; Richardson House, A+; 9-11 Sunset, B; Wilson House, B-; 10 Winthrop, B; Capen House, B-; the Arts Haus, A+; the Start House, A-; the Bayit House, C+; the Crafts House, B; the French Language House, B-; the German Language House, A-; La Casa, A-; the International House, C+; the Spanish Language House, B+; and the Russian Culture House, A.
The preliminary dorm grades are as follows: Bush Hall has a C; Carmichael Hall, C; Haskell Hall, B; Hill Hall, B-; Hodgdon Hall, A; Houston Hall, C+; Lewis Hall, C; Metcalf Hall, C; Miller Hall, C+; Stratton Hall, B; Tilton Hall, B-; Wren Hall, C; South Hall, B+; and West Hall, C-.
The interns at Tufts Recycles!, honored with the task of grading, have come up with a new cutting-edge system of grading that promotes competition between residences on campus with hopes that once recycling habits of students are revealed, there will be increase in campus-wide recycling. This grading system, separate from RecycleMania, hopes to promote recycling and therefore improve Tufts' performance in RecycleMania. Everyone but trash wins. But only with your help.
I'm just going to bet that even after reading this far you may be asking the individualistic, inevitable: What's in it for you? Beyond the satisfying feeling of being conscious about what and how much you consume, and what you can and can't recycle, there is, of course, a prize involved. I'm not at liberty to describe it in detail, but the prize could range anywhere from a plaque on the winning place of residence to an announcement in the very paper you're reading and beyond. In any case, you will be in want of the inevitable glory, fame and respect that follow the title "Best Recycler at Tufts."
But most importantly for your own self-advancement is the benefit of awareness: of your identity as a consumer tied to your identity as part of a whole; the ability to step back from that role and analyze what impacts result from the choices you make. You're not only a consumer, but a world citizen, if you will, and an educated, informed, autonomous being at that. Living your life as such — remembering the primary importance of reducing your consumption even before recycling — you can prolong this self-imposed competition forever by making the ideals behind RecycleMania a way of life. Check out the competition at www.recyclemania.com and be aware of your role as a consumer!
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Lucy McKeon is a senior majoring in English. She is an intern at Tufts Recycles!
