University Recreation hosted its first departmental campus cleanup as a way to help beautify campus grounds prior to commencement. Nine staff members collected one hundred pounds of trash from Mullins Creek in under one hour.

"We wanted to do something to positively impact our campus, and bring awareness to the U of A community about sustainability by focusing on the environment and keeping it a safe and clean place to live and work," said Lindsay Smith, assistant director for marketing and public relations.

The group cleaned up the section of Mullins Creek that runs through the Razorback Gardens. They were handed a re-usable river bag to collect the trash, a trash grabber, and rubber gloves.

"We posted the clean-up live on our Instagram stories, and received several messages from students asking how they could get involved in this effort," said Smith. "I think we will look at doing another one next semester and extend an invite out to the students."

Events like this cleanup effort support the University's goal of becoming a zero-waste institution by 2050.

"This is a great way to promote active learning experiences where students can gain awareness and a better understanding of community engagement as a lifelong responsibility," said Mike Hoover, assistant director for Outdoors.

After the clean-up, the group sorted through items to separate landfill from recyclables. 

"It is icing on the cake to return from a clean-up and be able to go one step further by recycling recovered waste from our campus grounds, said Kenny Williams, assistant director for Outdoors. 

There was a substantial amount of recovered waste that was able to be recycled during the UREC clean-up.  For more information related to campus recycling, please visit Razorback Recycling.