Written by Tiffany Jones
Two years ago, all of Harding University’s waste was going straight to Two Pine Landfill. This all changed when Greg Tatera, Aramark’s director of building services, got the go-ahead from the administration to start Harding’s first recycling program. After last year’s success of more than 154,000 lbs. recycled, Tatera thought the time was right to enter Harding in RecycleMania.
RecycleMania, sponsored by Keep America Beautiful, is a 10-week competition to increase recycling across America’s college campuses and raise awareness of waste management. The 10 weeks began Jan. 17 and ended March 27. Official final results will not be posted until April 7. Schools are ranked by the amount of recycled goods recycled per person in the per capita category and by which school is producing the least solid waste in the waste minimization category.
The competition is broken down into two divisions, competition and benchmark. Schools competing in the benchmark division are competing against themselves, working to beat their scores from the year before. Tatera decided that, “if we’re going to do this, we just need to jump in.”
Tatera entered Harding into the competition division, competing directly against 266 schools across the United States, including another Arkansas school, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville. This is a tough competition because University of Arkansas has had a recycling program in place since 1991.
“In many of the [RecycleMania] categories, we’re beating Fayetteville because it’s based on not just your size but the percentage of participation, and they are three or four times bigger than we are.”
In fact, in the recycling per capita rankings of Week 9, Harding is 77 schools ahead of Fayetteville. Fayetteville is ranked 40 schools ahead of us in the waste minimization category, but in the combined Grand Champion category we are still in the lead ranked 138 over Fayetteville’s 188.
In addition to the per capita and waste minimization categories, schools can compete in target categories for paper, cardboard, bottles, cans and food service organic materials.
To measure Harding’s progress, all materials are weighed by product, then given away to the city for free. Even with giving away recyclables the school is still saving money because of a decrease in waste going into the dumpsters. With the new recycling efforts, the dumpsters for the student center have been reduced from two dumpsters to one, saving the school around $400 a month.
Within the 10-week span of RecycleMania, Harding has recycled 68,840 lbs., 36,000 of that total coming from recycled paper. According to RecycleMania calculations only 25 percent of the school is recycling. That gives Harding a lot of room to grow.
The major recycling push for this year has been classroom recycling.
“As a student, when the bell rings and you have paper or plastic bottle in your hand, you’re interested in getting to your next class, not where the closest recycling bin is,” Tatera said. “So the easiest thing to do is throw it in the trash. To fix that problem there are now recycling bins in every classroom except for the science building, which should receive them by the end of this semester.”
Last year, a 250,000 lb.- recycling goal was set for July-Jun of this year. That goal has already been matched and exceeded with three months left to go.
Tatera believes that Christians are called to be good stewards of God’s gifts.
“What we do to this earth ultimately we’re doing for or against him,” Tatera said. “So, love the Creator and love His creation.”
