Portland State University
ER-2: Student Sustainability Outreach Campaign

Recyclemania Campaign: Brief description of the campaign: PSU participates in a variety of campaigns, as you will read about in the other credit forms. We have chosen to focus on our recycling campaign for this credit. If more information is needed to receive full points, we can provide additional information. PSU enters the Recyclemania competition (www.recyclemania.com) each year. It is a ten-week competition (from Jan. 19 to March 27th, 2009) between universities across the country to see who can collect the largest amounts of recyclables, the least amount of trash, and achieve higher recycling rates. The competition included the entire campus, and outreach happened through weekly updates in the campus newspaper, tabling, themed events, websites, residence hall and dining specific outreach, sharing results and tips, and other means to target behavior change in regards to recycling and waste minimization.

Recyclemania increased awareness of the recycling and waste management programs on campus, how to recycle correctly, and how to produce less waste on campus. Open reporting of results and data were made available to the campus community. The entire student population as well as staff and faculty participated. We finished 45th out of 148 universities in the Waste Minimization category with an average of 34.8 pounds of waste generated per person over the 10 week competition. That represents a reduction in per capita waste generation of 11.13 lbs from the 2007-08 campaign. We also finished 41st in Food Service Organics standings with 2.38 pounds of organics composted per person.