A broadcast reporting class assignment
The University of North Texas We Mean Green Fund hosted a zero-waste picnic on Feb. 5 to spread interest in the upcoming RecycleMania tournament.
The several attendees were welcomed into a Campus Union conference room with vegan cookies and brownies as they took their seats and produced their homemade zero-waste lunches.
The purpose of the small picnic was to let students and staff talk about their personal struggles with being mindful about the waste from food and other disposable items. Some attendees showed off their reusable lunchboxes or Tupperware while others displayed colorful reusable bags.
“So, it’s just like ‘be prepared when you can,’” said one attendee while talking about the struggles of staying zero-waste when eating out.
After the group finished eating and discussing their zero-waste lunches, We Mean Green Fund Graduate Assistant Heather Williams started her presentation on RecycleMania.
“We’re competing to see who can increase our recycling on campus,” Williams said. “But we’ve also done it a little differently where we are trying to reduce waste prior to that, so it’s a different kind of angle of thinking about things.”
As part of the competition, participating colleges from the United States and Canada total the weight of all bottles, cans, cardboard and paper recycled on campus per person every week. Also being calculated are the number of recycling bins across campus.
In 2018, UNT placed 106thout of the 251 schools participating with Rutgers University placing first.
The next RecycleMania event is a guided tour of Denton’s Pratt Recycling Facilities on Feb. 18 to further educate anyone interested in reducing their waste habits and even going zero-waste. RecycleMania serves as a competition to encourage more thoughtful habits when dealing with recycling, and many students continue those habits after the contest ends in March.
“We wanted our students to be able to talk about the different issues they’ve dealt with for stereotypes and find ways to overcome them,” Williams said.