RAs innovate in recycling challenge

Competition among SEC schools is a time-honored tradition from football to basketball and, now, recycling.

As part of the Make Orange Green campaign, the SEC schools are back in the competitive spirit for Recyclemania, a program that emphasizes the importance of recycling on campus. The competition, which is sponsored by Facilities Services, ends on March 28, and UT has a long way to go against other rival schools.

“UT is currently six out of the seven SEC schools competing, but we still have three weeks to redeem ourselves,” Alexandra Virtanen, public relations coordinator for facilities services department, said. “We want to encourage people to remember to recycle and reduce their waste. There are display cases in Presidential Court and in the UC next to Smokey’s.”

Virtanen said the department wants students, faculty and staff to be conscience of their waste.

“Every single office and residence hall room will have a recycling bin, and three slot bins for trash, paper and bottles are located in campus buildings,” Virtanen said. “If there is not a recycling bin around, just try to hold on to the item until you are able to recycle.”

However, the competition does not end there. On-campus students were able to learn more about the importance of living environmentally conscious during the Forth Annual Make Orange Green POWER Challenge 2009.

The competition, which ended on Friday, put residence halls against each other to see which group is the best at living green. Virtanen said each week the buildings were measured for water use, electricity use and recycling, and the winning hall was announced on the displays and on their Web site for that week.

Clement Hall was the overall winner of the Make Orange Green POWER Challenge 2009, with 177 electoral votes. Other category winners include Morrill Hall in the programs category, Clement Hall in water use, Humes Hall in electricity use and Laurel Hall in recycling.

“In order to make it fair, we are comparing per capita,” Virtanen said. “It is also broken down per capita.”

This year’s theme is POWER Challenge, which stands for Programs of Water use, Electricity use and Recycling. Campus resident assistants were encouraged to help educate their residents on being environmentally-friendly through bulletin boards and programs for a chance to win a trophy and other prizes.

“There were some really great ideas from the RAs, and we were really impressed,” Virtanen said.

There were four winning RAs: Morgan Cupp from Massey Hall, Paige Hamby and Nickey Alana from Morrill Hall and Heather Thomasson from Hess Hall.

“With my Morrill staff, we came up with weekly power challenges that hit some of the energy issues brought up by the green campaign. To conserve energy, we began the ‘Elevator up, stairs down’ program and the ‘Natural Light’ — and we don’t mean the beer — program,” said Alana, senior in biological sciences. “In the ‘Natural Light’ program, we encouraged residents to use the sunlight to light up their rooms instead of the overhead light.”

Alana and fellow RA Paige Hamby did a recycling trick-or-treat. They went around to each door on their floors and took their paper, aluminum cans and plastic bottles right on the spot.

“What I wanted my residents to get out of these programs was to have a proactive approach on making our campus a little bit greener,” Alana said.

It was this type of attitude that brought Morrill from 10th place among the residence halls to first place during the third week.

Cupp, a senior in biological sciences, took a different approach to informing her residents about going green by incorporating Valentine’s Day with it.

“My bulletin board consisted of a large planet Earth with a heart in the center and the saying ‘Love your Planet Earth.’ On the sides of my bulletin board, I listed ten simple ways that my residents can go green within their dorm room,” Cupp said. “I wanted to give my residents easy tips on how to recycle and go green on campus.”

Cupp said she learned a lot from her fellow staff members.

“One in particular is a program Massey had recently, which encouraged residents to make art from recycled products, including magazines, newspapers and aluminum cans,” Cupp said. “I think the residents enjoy the creative ways they can learn how to improve going green, and it’s due to their involvement that Massey is one of the top champions in the POWER Challenge competition.”