Come on, you maniacs, it’s time to recycle!

After its first day of competition, Binghamton University is standing second out of 26 New York schools in the Grand Champion category of this year’s Recyclemania.

According to Juliet Berling, the environmental resource manager at BU, she started entering the University into the nationwide competition about four years ago to try to jump-start BU’s own recycling initiative.

“BU had a recycling program, but it was pretty rudimentary,” Berling said. “I started pushing, and as [the University] started seeing our success, they started putting more money into the program.”

Over 500 college campuses compete in Recyclemania to reduce, reuse and recycle the most during a 10-week period.

Berling said she thought participating in Recyclemania could get more visibility for recycling on campus. The 2009 competition began yesterday and will run until March 28.

According to Alec Cooley, program manager for the competition, Recyclemania started as an informal challenge between two different colleges in Ohio to see who could recycle the most.

“The idea was to get students excited about recycling,” Cooley said. “It [the competition] has grown each year and doubled in size up until this year.”

Though the number of competitors did not double for the 2009 contest, the number of participating schools still increased by more than 100.

BU has several initiatives to increase recycling on campus, Berling said. Different measures include stocking all of the dorms with recycling bins and pushing campus offices to recycle more paper.

According to Berling, more is recycled when students and faculty at BU are reminded to do so.

“The more we put away to recycle, then the less we pay for garbage,” Berling said.

Sodexo increased the amount of recycling at the University by removing trash bins from the dining halls beginning in September. Students now drop off their garbage with their dirty dishes, and Sodexo employees separate the recyclables.

Berling said the difference was more than 60 tons in garbage weight each month, which also greatly decreased Sodexo’s garbage disposal costs.

“Instead of throwing out 10 to 15 garbage bags a day, they’re taking out one actual bag a day,” Berling said. “Their garbage rate went down by three-quarters and our compost rate went way up.”

According to Berling, the dining halls also began to work with more compostable paper products.

Mark Darling, the supervisor for recycling and resource management program at Ithaca College, said that though there currently isn’t any collaboration within the competition among colleges and universities, he thought there should be in the future. Ithaca College is also competing in Recyclemania this year.

“Perhaps if there were some rivalries between schools that could be exploited, it would stir up some interest [in recycling] among students,” Darling said.

Darling emphasized the amount of opportunities available to campuses to increase their recycling rates.

“All of them require an engaged and involved student body that questions the consumption and disposal cycle in which they are living,” he said.

Berling echoed his sentiments.

“If it can be recycled, it should be recycled,” she said.