The Campus Green: RecycleMania!

“Leeeeeeeeeeet’s get ready to RECYCLEEEEE!” We’re not talking about wrestlemania, but RecycleMania!

RecycleMania, a competition across the nation, is a benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. After 10 weeks of fierce competition, the results are in! The title of “Grand Champion” goes to California State University, San Marcos. In this short span of time, 510 different schools from all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Canada collectively recycled or composted just over 69.4 million pounds of waste. Now that’s a lot of party clean-ups. With 4.7 million students and 1.1 million faculty and staff participating in the mania, the word is definitely getting out about reducing, reusing, and recycling across college campuses.

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“Going Solar” Affordably

The focus of government programs encouraging the individual use of alternative energy sources focusing primarily on high end systems, particularly solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, although well-intentioned, may ultimately end up ineffective for the most part. Programs that result in significant numbers using at least some solar, geothermal or other alternative energy sources are infinitely more valuable than ones that are more expensive but are only utilized by a small “elite” of environmentally aware AND financially well off consumers.

While strong majorities of Americans believe that all new home construction ought to offer consumers a solar option, and most state that they would be willing to pay a premium of 10% more on a new home, very few Americans currently own solar home installations.
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