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.
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 …
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