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Rutgers attempts to defend title in recycling contest

Rutgers red, meet gorilla green. Actually, they're quite the team already. Rutgers University is trying for its fourth consecutive win in the annual intercollegiate RecycleMania contest. For three years, it has claimed the competition's Gorilla Prize for the most pounds of recyclables collected, one of eight contest categories.

David Katz, a student environmental activist, left, and Nathan Levinson, Associate Dean (Akira Suwa / Staff Photographer )
David Katz, a student environmental activist, left, and Nathan Levinson, Associate Dean (Akira Suwa / Staff Photographer )Read more

Rutgers red, meet gorilla green.

Actually, they're quite the team already.

Rutgers University is trying for its fourth consecutive win in the annual intercollegiate RecycleMania contest. For three years, it has claimed the competition's Gorilla Prize for the most pounds of recyclables collected, one of eight contest categories.

In 2009, Rutgers left competitors in its sustainable dust with over 2.1 million pounds of collected stuff, more than twice what closest rival Harvard was able to muster. It gathered a little over 998,000 pounds. Take that, Ivy.

About three weeks into the 10-week international competition this year, Rutgers already has shown it means business. It's among the top five in half of the contest's eight categories, and holds first place in the race for the Gorilla Prize. Almost 400 schools are competing against one another in the various categories.

But this isn't just about recognition. Rutgers is avid about recycling.

"We've been doing it a long time, and we just make it work right," said Magda Comeau, the university's green-purchasing manager.

Ever since New Jersey's recycling law went into effect in 1987, Comeau said, her boss Kevin Lyons, Rutgers' chief procurement officer and a research professor in supply chain environmental archaeology, has been a prime supporter of the greening of Rutgers.

"I thought we would be further along than we are now!" Lyons wrote in an e-mail.

"I understand that change sometimes takes a long time, but I thought everyone would have bought into the environmental protection concepts and certainly the recycling concepts long ago," he said.

Still, Rutgers is doing well. The university even buys with an eye toward waste management. When furniture is purchased, for example, the university specifies that it arrive without packaging materials, just in moving blankets, Comeau said.

Dining hall food waste from the New Brunswick/Piscataway campus is processed into a meal that a local farmer uses to feed his pigs. The university also is exploring a push by students to get rid of bottled water.

Last year, Rutgers' efforts saved 4,600 cubic yards of landfill space, 8.3 million gallons of water, and 2,863 barrels of oil, according to university officials.

Between the solar farm on the Livingston campus and other efficiencies, the school says it conserved nearly 5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and cut its greenhouse gas output by about 2,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of saving nearly 15,000 trees.

In addition to its impressive record in RecycleMania - which is supported by the federal Environmental Protection Agency's WasteWise Program, the National Recycling Coalition, and the College and University Recycling Council - Rutgers and its faculty have received numerous other honors.

The university claimed the 2009 Energy Educator of the Year award from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the 2008 Gold Achievement Award for Recycling from the federal environmental agency, and, in 2007, the state Department of Environmental Protection's Clean Water New Jersey Award.

This year is the second that Rutgers Camden has taken part in RecycleMania. To get people in the spirit, competitions to design the best recycling container and poster are in the works.

Young people get recycling, according to Nathan Levinson, an associate dean of the business school.

"They've grown up with it," said Levinson, who also is cochair of the university's Sustainability Cabinet. "They're cognizant, and they recognize the immediacy of it. It's not about their children. It's about them."

David Katz, 18, a Rutgers Camden freshman and environmental activist from Long Island, is one of those people.

He is considering going into environmental law and is on the South Jersey campus' Sustainability Cabinet. He's an organizer with the Sustainable Camden campaign and is active in the Public Interest Research Group. He also is running a campuswide survey to increase awareness about recycling and how to do it properly.

"All my efforts are directed towards establishing a strong sustainable community here at Rutgers," Katz wrote in an e-mail. "I am a strong believer in recycling because it is such a simple effort that produces a myriad of profound effects."

With that kind of commitment institutionally and at the grassroots, Rutgers would appear to have a fighting chance in this year's RecycleMania. In the Gorilla Prize division - so named because only the biggest schools, the gorillas, have a shot - the first week of the contest found Rutgers with a whopping 313,167 pounds of recyclables. The closest competitor was the University of Georgia with 118,500 pounds.

But the contest isn't over until March 27.

If Rutgers is once again the winning Gorilla, it will be awarded another glass trophy - made of recycled glass, Comeau noted.

The university has encouraged students and staff to keep up the effort, and so far they've come through. Of course, there are limits.

"We tried to make the Scarlet Knight green," Comeau said, "but it didn't go over too well."