On a warm California day, two students, Hilda Nieblas and Karla Guzman, stood in front of the Student Union and gave out free pizza to passing students and faculty. Nieblas, a first year graduate student majoring in public administration, also serves as the Vice President of Programming for ASI.
Guzman, a sophomore student, and Nieblas volunteered their time to help host the kick-off Recycle Mania. According to Nieblas, “[Recyclemania] is a national competition amongst schools to encourage students to do more recycling.” The campaign also looks to “educate students about the environmental benefits that recycling has,” said Nieblas.
The “Trash Monster” was also present at the Recycle Mania debut. The monster can be seen walking around campus to help promote recycling awareness. Nieblas explains, “The trash monster symbolizes the amount a plastic bags used per year. Each year 500 bags per person are used.”
According to the press release, CSUB President Horace Mitchell said: “Our students are committed to advancing the culture of recycling on campus. Recycling is one part of our larger environmental sustainability goals to reduce waste, use energy-efficienct appliances, and use alternative sources of energy and transportation.”
Approximately 40 students showed up for the kick-off to support the recycling project as well as to receive the complementary pizza. An eclectic mix of music was played to help attract a broad audience. The event began at 12:30 p.m. and lasted until the last slice of pizza was passed out at roughly 1:15 p.m.
According to Recycle Mania’s webpage, the tournament first launched in 2001 when recycling coordinators at Ohio University and Miami University challenged each other to see which school could recycle the most. Miami University would win the first challenge by recycling over 41 pounds per person.
As of 2011, the competition included 630 colleges representing 49 states and four Canadian provinces.
The tournament will last for two months with recycling events to be scheduled each week. Also, CSUB will be having their first Recycle Mania weigh-in on Wednesday, Feb. 13.
The community can get involved with recycling efforts by participating in the e-waste event that will be taking place on Friday, Feb. 8 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., as well as on Saturday, Feb. 9 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event will be held at the former Southwest Little League parking lot on Camino Media and Southwest Drive. Items such as: cell phones, answering machines, compact disk players, copiers, pagers, camcorders, modems and radios can be recycled. For more information, check out the Recycle Mania website at recyclemaniacs.org
