Campus Initiatives: Competitions

RecycleMania

RecycleMania is a friendly competition among college and university recycling programs in the United States that provides the campus community with a fun, proactive activity in waste reduction. Over a 10-week period, campuses compete in different contests to see which institution can collect the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, or have the highest recycling rate.

Elon has participated in RecycleMania since 2007. In the 2009 competition, Elon placed 168th out of 433 schools and 2nd among Southern Conference schools that entered the competition. During RecyleMania, Elon holds its own Resident Area Competition to determine which area can recycle the most per capita. West Area won this competition in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, several areas stepped up to challenge West Area. It was a close competition with first placing going to The Oaks by a small margin.

POWERless

POWERless is a seven-week energy competition among the residence halls to increase energy conservation awareness. Students compete to reduce the energy use in their building, based on baseline power consumption. The winner is the building with the largest percentage energy reduction over the course of the competition. An award is also given to the residential area with the overall largest percentage energy reduction.

Many of Elon’s residence halls are connected to a web-based system, called Building Dashboard, where students can monitor their energy usage in real-time. They can also compare their building’s energy usage to a rival building’s usage. The unit equivalent feature of the system allows comparisons in units such as pounds of coal and burgers.

Spring 2009 was the second year for the POWERless competition. The kwh reduction during the 2009 competition was 159,054 kwh. Every residential area reduced consumption over the seven week contest. Environmentally this means the students prevented 64 tons of coal from being burned; 90 tons of carbon dioxide emissions (primary contributor to climate change) and 413 pounds of nitrogen oxide emissions and 1,033 pounds of sulfur dioxide emissions (contributors to acid rain).

For POWERless 2009, two divisions were created based on occupancy size to enhance the competition.
In the area competition the greatest energy reduction was achieved by:

• Division II – Danieley Center, 47.34%
• Division I – The Oaks, 20.28%

The buildings with the top energy reduction in each Division were:

• Division II – Danieley Center Flat I, 26.84%
• Division I – Oaks Building B, 22.51%