Recycling Contest
RECYCLING CONTEST: Its Use and Effectiveness to Promote Campus Participation.
SUMMARY
In the fall semester of 1999, VU held a residence hall recycling contest to promote knowledge and use of the campus recycling system. The contest was
administered by EarthTones and sponsored in part by a grant from
the Porter County Solid Waste District. The contest had three
major goals all feeding into the larger goal of increasing recycling on
campus:
- To give students an incentive (the prize) to learn how to use the recycling system in their residence halls.
- To provide a focused way to advertise the campus recycling system.
- To impose a deadline for campus services to install easy-to-use recycling centers in every major residence hall on campus.
The contest was held during the second week of November. It was advertised for a week prior to the actual contest and a follow-up study was performed one week after the contest. The contest allowed several groups on campus to work together toward a common goal including faculty, volunteer students in a extracurricular environmental group, housekeeping staff, physical plant staff, and a student working on a service learning project for a biology course. Final evaluation of the contest suggests that it was a useful way to focus the community's attention on recycling but probably did not have a big effect on increasing student participation in recycling because this was already quite high.
METHODS
When to hold the contest? We originally proposed that this contest take
place during the spring semester of the 1998-99 academic year. However,
the transient nature of students in residence halls on campus meant that
any residence hall-wide prize could only be enjoyed by the student winners
for a few weeks if the contest was held in the spring. Therefore, we chose
to hold the contest in the middle of the fall semester so that the
residents of the winning hall could enjoy their prize for the rest of the
year. Additional time had to be allotted for notifying the Assistant Dean
of Resident Life and house councils about the contest. The contest was
held during the week of November 8-12, 1999.
Who to include? We wanted to limit the contest in some way to insure fairness as well as maintain focus for publicizing the event. Thus, we made the contest available only to students living in the main residence halls even though we have recycling centers set up all over campus.
What prize? The prize was intended to be an attractive incentive for students to participate in the contest. With the help of the students in the EarthTones group and funding from this group, we decided to offer a $300 appliance of choice for the winner. Each residence hall has different needs like a new VCR monitor for a lounge, toaster ovens for hall kitchens, microwave for main area, etc.... Because the students would be living in the hall for the rest of the year, this type of prize provided an immediate reward to the winners for their efforts. Individual prizes to each student in the winning hall were considered but were not within budget considering that over 100 students live in each hall.
How advertised? A one sheet advertisement that gave specific information on
where to take recyclable materials was created for each residence hall.
These fliers were placed on residence hall bulletin boards, doors, and
bathroom stalls by student volunteers. All of the major residence halls on
campus were included in the contest. These were Alumni Hall, Brandt Hall,
Guild/Memorial Halls, Lankenau Hall, Scheele Hall, and Wehrenberg Hall. A
total of 700 fliers were distributed in the seven halls. An advertisement
was also taken out in the school newspaper and a campus-wide electronic
announcement was made as a reminder on the first day of the contest. As
the contest date approached, Guild/Memorial and Wehrenberg Halls did not
have central recycling areas. Part of the preparation for the contest was
to contact physical plant services and housekeeping services and request
that recycling centers be started in these halls.
How winner was determined? A team of student judges from the EarthTones
group was sent out unannounced on two days during the week of the contest.
These judges wore protective clothing of Tyvek lab coats, latex gloves, and
safety glasses. Each judge had a data sheet directing them to assess the
percent of materials in recycle bins that were not recyclable and the
percent of materials in the trash bin that should have been recycled.
After the judging
period, data sheets were combined from all judges (eight
total) to determine the winning residence hall. Two residence halls were
so close in their scores (low percent trash in recycles and low percent
recycles in trash) that a final 'runoff' check was done to determine that
the winner was Brandt Hall. The results of the contest were announced on
the following Monday during a house council meeting.
How effective? To get an idea of how effective the contest was in encouraging student recycling, recycling participation was assessed before and after the contest in five of the residence halls. A biology student designed and performed this assessment as a service learning project for an environmental biology course. Bins in the main recycling areas were checked for two days the week before and two days during the week after the contest for contamination of trash in recycling and recyclable materials in the trash.
RESULTS
The contest succeeded in providing an excellent incentive to get recycling
centers established in all major residence halls on campus. It also
brought several groups and individuals together in positive ways as they
worked toward the common goal which the contest provided. The
advertisement of the contest acted as an excellent reminder for the campus
community about how easy it is to recycle. In these aspects the contest
was a great success.
However, the detailed collection of data on before- and after-contest recycling participation did not show a big effect. Of ten recycling bins checked in five residence halls before the contest, three had some contamination by trash and only one had significant contamination of greater than 10% trash. Of those same ten bins checked after the contest, three had very small amounts of contamination and only one had significant contamination. As for the disposal of recyclable materials in the trash, there was also no apparent difference before and after the contest with less than 10% of the material going out in the trash being recyclable both times. Thus, although the contest appeared to have little effect in the overall recycling effort by the students during November, recycling was already at a reasonably high level before the contest started.
FUTURE PROSPECTS
The contest was an overall success in that it allowed more recycling
centers to be created in the residence halls where none had been available
before. Perhaps in the future, total recycling efforts on campus could be
improved most by targeting academic or administration buildings rather than
residence halls because VU students already appear to be doing a great job
of recycling their refuse. EarthTones and the campus ad hoc committee on
recycling hope to do more in the future with promoting recycling in all
buildings on campus and welcome any input from members of the campus
community on how to achieve this goal.
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