UMD Ranked No. 1 Among State of Maryland Universities for Recycling Rate

The University of Maryland continues to make improvements in several major categories in the annual RecycleMania competition among colleges and universities in North America.

UMD highlights from the 2019 competition include:

• No. 1 in the state of Maryland with a 50% recycling rate (an improvement from 49% in 2018)
• No. 2 in the Big Ten Conference for recycling rate (improved from No. 3 in 2018)
• Recycled 11 pounds per person (compared to 10 pounds in 2018)
• Recycled 8,260 pounds of sensitive documents for shredding during an all-campus shredding and electronics recycling event in March

The 2019 tournament featured 300 schools participating from 43 states in the United States, the District of Columbia and Canada, with an enrollment of 4.5 million students. Participating colleges and universities are ranked in various categories according to how much recycling and food waste they divert from the landfill over two months.

Throughout the competition, the university saved 880 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) over an eight-week period, comparable to keeping over 173 cars off the road or the energy consumption of 76 households during this period of time.

“RecycleMania is a great opportunity to promote our campus recycling program,” said Bill Guididas, Assistant Director, Administrative Services, Facilities Management. “We are very pleased with our results this year, which can be attributed to the whole campus community and their daily efforts to sort their waste properly.”

Outreach and education efforts included a sensitive document shredding and e-waste event, educational activities at residence halls as a part of the Green Terp program, and the sixth annual “Recycle This!” video contest. This year’s winner was student Diwen Dong for her video “Know Before You Throw.”

For a summary of UMD’s RecycleMania performance, visit recyclemania.umd.edu