RecycleMania
Each year, CWRU participates in RecycleMania, an 8-week recycling competition during February and March between colleges and universities across the U.S. and Canada. RecycleMania is an opportunity to benchmark how much our university recycles, and how much goes to the landfill. Through the competition, we hope to raise awareness or recycling practices on campus; boost excitement about recycling by engaging the campus community in a friendly rivalry; and reduce the overall climate impact of our university.
To learn more about the program and our efforts, check out the RecycleMania website and follow our Facebook and Twitter pages during RecycleMania season.
REScycle
Students moving out of their residence halls for the summer and leaving campus after graduation leave behind piles of clothes and other household items that still have plenty of life left in them. The Office of Energy & Sustainability partners with The Offices of Housing, Residence Life, and Greek Life to coordinate an annual collection drive known as REScycle.
During REScycle—usually beginning during the reading period and continuing until after graduation—large boxes labeled “REScycle donation location” are placed in the first floor common area of all residence halls and participating Greek houses. Students are welcome to place all unwanted items in good condition into the boxes to donate.
Items we can handle include (but are not limited to):
- Clothes (no underwear please, although bras and bathing suits are acceptable);
- Shoes;
- Coats;
- Sheets + Blankets (no mattress pads);
- Dishes, Pots + Pans;
- Books, Notebooks + School supplies;
- Small Housewares + Electronics; and
- Toys + Sports Equipment.
Larger furniture items that are unbroken can be donated by making a request via the Housing Work Order system. Staff members will contact you and arrange for a pick-up. Donated items are sent to Simple Recycling, who partners with local non-profits and resale shops to fundraise for groups such as the City Mission. Any non-perishable food items are donated to the Food Bank. Also, any unwanted electronic item, working or broken, can be put into a REScycle donation location, to be sent to our e-waste recycling partners at RET3.
In the first year hosting REScycle in its current format, we did not measure the volume of materials we donated to the Thea Bowman Center in the nearby Mount Pleasant Neighborhood, but it included at least 150 garbage bags of clothing and shoes, and many large boxes of household items and school supplies. In 2013, after switching to working with Simple Recycling (then DonateStuff.com), we REScycled seven tons of items. In 2014, REScycle collected over five tons of material. This year's REScycle event collected 8.8 tons of clothes and household items, and included Greek Life housing in our efforts!
Annual Res Hall Energy & Sustainability Contest
See menu to the left for more details