RecycleMania falls short of goal

With four days left, Penn is unlikely to meet its goal of 30 percent cumulative recycling in RecycleMania — an eight-week competition among universities and colleges across the United States and Canada.

“I’m not optimistic” that we will make our goal, Sustainability Coordinator Dan Garofalo said.

Penn’s cumulative recycling rate as of two weeks ago is at 28.21 percent. This number excludes last week’s rate, which has yet to be calculated.

In order to achieve the goal, which in February Garofalo called “realistic,” Penn would have to push for an average recycling rate of over 35 percent in the last two weeks of the competition.

Penn students are “a mixed bag,” College sophomore and Eco-Rep Brent Ginsberg said. “Their habits may not always align with their beliefs. They care, but it comes down to convenience.”

Making recycling easier throughout campus could increase recycling rates, Ginsberg added.

However, Garofalo is unsure whether students are responsible for the lower-than-expected recycling rates. “[Penn] is such a complicated place” that it’s hard to know why we didn’t meet our goal, he added.

Ginsberg agreed, pointing out that while “students play a huge role, Penn’s also a huge employer,” which makes it difficult to know which group is resisting recycling efforts.

Despite the low rates, there were many successful events held during RecycleMania this year, Garofalo said. Penn had its first zero-waste basketball game, which helped the Penn Green Campus Partnership identify barriers surrounding large-scale recycling events. In addition, schools led individual initiatives such as the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s electronic-waste recycling.

Despite the disappointing results of this year’s RecycleMania, Garofalo is confident Penn will meet its goal of 40 percent recycling by 2014, as outlined in the Climate Action Plan.

“The overall trend at Penn is that our recycling rate is going up, and overall waste is going down,” he said.

While it is difficult to encourage students to recycle, Penn’s sustainability efforts are top among its peers, Penn President Amy Gutmann said in a previous interview. Recycling is just one part of a much larger effort to greenify campus, she added.

Reducing energy use has a bigger impact than recycling, Vice President of Facilities and Real Estate Services Anne Papageorge said.

“Recycling doesn’t save a huge amount of carbon emissions,” she added.

Meanwhile, not everyone has given up hope for Penn to meet its RecycleMania goal by April 2.

For Sustainability Communications Coordinator Steve Belfiglio, it is too early to admit defeat. “We still have to see the final two weeks,” he said.

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