FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – University of Arkansas students have a chance to win cash prizes for their residence hall, fraternity or sorority by taking part in the 2009 RecycleMania competition, which is set to begin Sunday, Jan. 18. At the same time they’ll be competing with students from about 200 colleges and universities to see which school can recycle the most and create the least waste.

 This year’s competition is open to all residence halls and Greek houses, with cash prizes being awarded to the top two halls or houses with the largest per capita recycling collections.

“Razorback Recycling will collect and weigh the recyclables from each hall or house, and keep track of the data,” said Nick Brown, executive assistant for sustainability in the facilities management department. “All the students have to do is recycle.”

Weekly status boards will be posted at the university’s recycling Web site http://fama.uark.edu/recycling to keep Razorback Recyclers apprised of the previous week's collection data. The recyclable items that are tracked by the contest include paper, cardboard, cans and bottles. Contest managers will evaluate performance, and cash prizes will be awarded to the residence halls and Greek organizations that recycle the most on a per capita basis.

“We are also hoping to get all the offices and departments on campus involved as well,” said Lew Meyers, pollution prevention coordinator for the campus environmental health and safety office. “Those are a bit harder to measure on a per capita basis, and we won’t be offering cash prizes, but we are discussing some kind of recognition awards for faculty and staff who do an outstanding job of recycling.”

RecycleMania runs from Jan. 18 through March 28. The friendly competition is supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's WasteWise program and the National Recycling Coalition. This will be the second year the University of Arkansas has taken part in the competition. In 2008, the university earned bragging rights as a winner among the SEC entries in two categories: waste minimization, for producing the least amount of municipal solid waste per person; and grand champion, for having the largest amount of recycling per person and the smallest amount of solid waste per person. During the 10-week contest period the university collected 271,846 pounds of paper, cardboard, cans and bottles, an average of 13.59 pounds per person, amounting to a 15 percent increase in recyclable collections over the same period the previous year.

More information is available at the RecycleMania Web site: http://recyclemaniacs.org/index.htm.