Kent Stark and Stark State College Compete in National Recycling Competition

Both located off of Frank Avenue in Jackson Township, Kent State University at Stark and Stark State College will compete against other colleges and universities nationally in the 2012 RecycleMania Tournament, taking place February 5 – March 30.

RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities, tracked over an 8-week period each spring.

As some of the largest recyclers in Stark County, serving more than 29,000 students annually and with more than 1,500 employees combined, the competition provides Kent State Stark and Stark State an opportunity to build on the sustainability programs already in place, while creating greater awareness and promoting further participation among students, faculty and staff.

This is Kent State Stark’s fourth year participating in the RecycleMania program, which complements the campus’s many other sustainability initiatives, including:

• Energy conservation initiatives, which, by 2014, will achieve a guaranteed 37 percent reduction in energy consumption at Kent State Stark.

• An which serves the entire Stark County community and provides education and information for families to implement “green” practices into their everyday lives.

• A reusable cup program, which provides incentives to students who use the cups in the campus Emporium (versus disposable cups), as well as the implementation of enviroware™products, which contain an average of 21.8 percent pre-consumer recycled materials and 100 percent recycled carbon dioxide (CO2). Additionally, water fountains equipped with water-bottle refill stations were installed throughout campus, promoting the multiple use of cups and bottles to reduce waste.
  
  

Kent State Stark’s ongoing recycling and waste minimization campaign enabled the campus to eliminate one of the weekly trash collections and continues to yield positive results. To learn more about Kent State Stark's sustainability initiatives, including RecycleMania, visit www.stark.kent.edu/sustainability.

Stark State’s college-wide sustainability campaign of “reduce, reuse and recycle paper, plastic, glass and metal cans,” is being supplemented during RecycleMania with an interoffice competition for faculty and staff, a daily Facebook trivia contest and discounts on “green” items in the College Store.  

In addition, Stark State student groups will make and sell recycled notebooks creating them from flattened cereal boxes and the unprinted sides of paper reclaimed from recycling bins. A display of plastic bags will hang in the Student Center from March 19-30 to demonstrate that the average American uses 500 plastic bags each year. For more information about Stark State’s sustainability programs and schedule of campus events, go to www.starkstate.edu/goinggreen.

Both campuses will regularly update their perspective websites throughout the RecycleMania campaign. Following the competition, the final results will be released to the media in early April.

Through RecycleMania, Stark State College and Kent State Stark are positively affecting our future by raising the awareness of how the everyday habits of these campus communities affect our planet.