Today @ Colorado State

Environment / Sustainability

Single-stream recycling available

January 30, 2009

As Colorado State University prepares to kick-off its fourth year participating in RecycleMania - a national collegiate recycling contest - the university announced that single stream recycling is available for everyone at the university.

“There is no need to sort,” said Sheela Backen, operations manager for Facilities Management at Colorado State. “All recycling goes into one bin now.”

Individual recycle bins will accept the following container and paper materials:

• Clean no. 1-7 plastic bottles, tubs and containers. No plastic bags, pesticide or motor oil containers, Styrofoam, microwavable or food trays.
• Glass bottles and jars of any color – remove and recycle metal lids. No broken glass, light bulbs, plate glass or cookware.
• Aluminum cans – not crushed or flattened.
• Steel (tin) cans
• Metal jar lids and bottle caps
• Empty aerosol cans – no caps
• Aluminum foil
• Newspapers and newspaper inserts – no plastic bags
• Magazines, catalogs and books
• Opened junk mail and envelopes
• Office paper – no neon, Astrobright or carbon paper
• Phone books 
• Paperboard – cereal and clothing boxes and egg cartons

Note:  Corrugated cardboard, including packing and pizza boxes, still go into a separate bin for corrugated cardboard.

Last year, Colorado State placed second out of 400 universities nationwide in the Grand Champion category. CSU finished with a cumulative recycling rate of 51 percent of the total waste generated on campus, up from 41 percent last year. The university also finished fifth in the country in the Waste Minimization category.

RecycleMania competition kickoffs Feb. 2

The university will kick-off this year's RecycleMania competition on Monday, Feb. 2. RecycleMania is a 10-week recycling competition with more than 500 colleges and universities competing against each institution's recycling program.

Over a 10-week period, campuses compete in different contests to see which institution can collect 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.

The main goal of the event is to increase student awareness of campus recycling and waste minimization. All participating schools are required to report measurements on a weekly basis in pounds. 

Learn more about CSU campus recycling and recyclable materials.

Learn more about the RecycleMania competition.