Southwestern College was crowned champions of the 2020 Electronics Recycling (E-cyclemania) competition, a special category of the nationwide RecycleMania competition.

 

“It is a privilege to partner with The City of Winfield, Grace United Methodists Church, and GON Recycling each year to collect and recycle obsolete electronics and prevent tens of thousands of pounds of e-waste from being sent to landfills,” says Jason Speegle, director of Green Team Southwestern.   “Over the past seven years, electronic recycling efforts have collected, recycled, or refurbished over 100,000 pounds of electronics. Being recognized as the top college or university in the nation for recycling electronics per capita is definitely a nice honor. This is the sixth year in the past seven that Southwestern has been the top electronics recycler per capita in the nation.”

 

Plastic pollution and solid waste disposal are rising as a critical threat to the world's wildlife and to human health. There are few solutions to this problem as important as engaging and educating America's future leaders on the dangers of solid waste and plastics build-up, and how the problem can be addressed through reduction of use, recycling, composting, and more.

 

The RecycleMania competition is designed to educate and challenge students, staff, and faculty at college campuses in the United States to compete for best in a category by reducing and recycling the most waste in a prescribed eight-week period.  Due to COVID-19, and early campus closures, RecycleMania recognized the top-ranking campuses for each category based on weeks one through five only (Feb. 2 through March 7).

 

The competition measures such factors as how much of a campus's waste stream is recycled, how much is diverted, per capita results, food waste abatement and more. It also examines the effect of education on young people avoiding single-use plastics such as disposable bottles and packaging.

 

More than 4.5 million students and staff were reached and 300 U.S. and Canadian campuses participated in RecycleMania 2020.  Nearly 48.6 million pounds of waste was recycled, composted, and donated; 380 million plastic bottles were kept from the landfills; and campuses prevented the release of 70,875 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere, which is equal to avoiding the annual emissions from 15,047 cars.