Recyclemania update

I just posted our first week's data for Recyclemania. Thanks to Keith and Sarah, the CRAP Crew, Ray Stuart, the Compost Crew, Aimee Sawwyer, Marcy Rose and everyone else who helped us with our competition numbers.

You can see the results at http://www.recyclemaniacs.org

So far, so good. We have pretty high numbers for the per capita paper and food waste recycling, compared to other colleges. So for instance, Unity recycled 3.9 pounds per person of paper, compared to Green Mountain College's 2.7 pounds per person of paper (in 2007 -- they haven't posted a 2008 number yet). I chose this comparison school because they are the college most like us that reported a recycled paper number. Other colleges seem to do quite a bit worse. Check it out at the web site.

We still have some bugs to work out. The trash quantities are given to us monthly by Bolsters, so many yards at 200 pounds per yard, but the dates are of course a month behind, so our trash numbers will lag our recycling numbers by a month.

I'm still working with Bolster's on getting a number for the weight of cardboard recycling.

And we haven't got a number for the weight of cans and bottles. This is probably because these are deposited, and so someone takes them to the redemption center, not to the transfer station. If anyone has an idea how to get a number for this, let me know ASAP.

Mick

Update: Turns out the deposited cans and bottles are collected by two groups: The RAs, for their pizza fund no doubt, and the CRAP Crew, who fish some out of regular recycling when the RAs don't get them, and get the rest from the non-residence hall recycle stations. Sarah is going to weigh the latter. Steve has been asked to count the former, and then we will find a conversion factor.