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University of Minnesota garbage truck to turn sidewalk at Coffman Union into a landfill- Volunteers to "dumpster dive" for recyclables -
Students will want to hold their noses and step carefully on Wednesday, Feb. 4 as an University of Minnesota garbage truck transforms the sidewalk in front of Coffman Union into a landfill -- a temporary one. At 9 a.m. Wednesday, the garbage truck will dump its full load of trash in front of Coffman, 300 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis. Then a group of volunteers will go on something of a trash treasure hunt. They will sort through the pile and pull out the cans, bottles and newspapers that could have been recycled, but ended up in the trash instead. The trash dump is part of an effort to increase recycling on campus. Despite a quarter century's worth of recycling efforts and individual recycling containers for newspapers, glass and plastic in University of Minnesota buildings, only about 32 percent of recyclable materials made it into the recycling stream in 2008. The goal is to increase that number to 50 percent. "Recycling has been part of the university and part of our culture for 25 years now, and I've got to believe that everyone knows the environmental benefits of recycling," said Dana Donatucci, director of the university's recycling program. "If everyone gets involved, I know we can get to that goal of 50 percent." The push to increase recycling is part of the campus-wide RecycleMania effort that is currently underway. RecycleMania is a national competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. During a 10-week period, schools report recycling and trash data which are then ranked according to who collects the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, or have the highest recycling rate. With each week's reports and rankings, participating schools watch how their results fluctuate against other schools and use this to rally their campus communities to reduce and recycle more. The University of Minnesota is a pioneer in campus recycling efforts. More than 10 tons of recyclable material is collected on campus each day. For more information on university recycling, visit the recycling web page at http://www1.umn.edu/recycle/index.html ---------- |
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