RecycleMania, an eight-;week long competition that measures and compares collected trash and recycling for more than 600 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, last Friday released the results of the 2012 recycling competitions.
Tufts competed in the Grand Champion and Per Capita Classic categories for the seventh year running. Tufts placed 42nd in the Grand Champion category and 11th in the Per Capita category, according to RecycleMania's website.
Additionally, Tufts came in first among the other New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) schools.
Tufts typically scores best in the Per Capita category, which is pounds of recycling per person, according to Recycling Coordinator for Tufts Recycles! Dawn Quirk.
"We generally fall in the per capita around 15 and on the grand champion around 40, but there's several hundred schools," Quirk said. "However, I try to advertise where we rank compared to local schools or the NESCAC schools because I think that may be more meaningful to the Tufts community."
This year marks the third year that Tufts Recycles! has promoted RecycleMania on campus through inter-;dorm competitions, according to Quirk.
"We started doing an inter-;dorm competition where the recycling interns and myself would team up and go through the dorms and we grade how much recycling is in the trash in the dorms," she said. "I think RecycleMania is more meaningful to [students] now that we're grading them against each other, so I think it's been worth it."
Quirk and the Tufts Recycles! interns assign the dorms and small houses preliminary grades in the fall before the RecycleMania competition begins in the spring, according to Tufts Recycles! intern Danielle Cotter.
"It's a three-;part process," Cotter, a senior, said. "In the fall, we do preliminary grades to let the halls know how they're doing."
Tufts Recycles! grades each dorm and small house twice during the eight-;week competition and then posts the results around the residence halls and in the dining halls, according to Quirk.
"We grade on a curve," she said. "When we look in the trash and see takeout ware - [which] we understand may be confusing, people don't know what to do with it - we don't take that seriously. We'll grade a bin poorly if there's water bottles in the trash."
The 10 Winthrop House won the small houses competition with an overall score of A-; and Haskell and Carmichael tied for first among the dormitories with scores of B+. Metcalf West scored the highest in the preliminary round with a B+ but placed last with an overall score of D, according to Quirk.
"I'm going to work with Facilities to see if I can put plaques in the winning dorms for the last three years because I think when people move in they'll see the plaques and wonder what this is," Quirk said. "Haskell's been [at] the top two years in a row so there's something going on well there."
While Tufts' recycling rates have improved, they are still relatively stagnant, according to Quirk.
"I definitely think RecycleMania has raised the profile of recycling and has increased awareness and lets people know that we keep looking in [their] trash and notice if [they] aren't recycling," she said. "Because when we've been out, people sometimes get embarrassed when [they] find that we see a lot of recycling in the trash."
