This Week @ AU

This February, almost 4,000 Auburn students in 30 residence halls will compete in this year's Sustain-A-Bowl Championship, Auburn's annual resource competition. Beginning on Feb. 1 and ending four weeks later on Feb. 28, Sustain-A-Bowl will put halls against one another to see which is the most sustainable.  The competition challenges residents to reduce their electricity, water and waste and increase their recycling over the course of the four weeks and to live more sustainably as a community. But the competition is not just about using less, it is also about learning more. It is not just about turning off your Wii at night and taking shorter showers, it is also about knowledge and participation. Throughout the month of February, residents and Residence Life staff can earn points for their halls by participating in events that promote the competition and educate other residents about sustainable living. For a complete list of events see this link.

Also starting Feb. 1 is RecycleMania, a national competition for college campuses to minimize waste and increase recycling.  Last year during Sustain-A-Bowl, students managed to save $5,506 in electricity and $2,785 in water, for  a total of $8,291 over the course of the month. Over the last four years the Auburn campus has recycled thousands of tons of materials that would otherwise have gone to the landfill. This event is being hosted by Residence Life with the help of all their staff and the Eco-Reps, the Office of Sustainability and its interns,  the Auburn Recycling Program and Ken Martin and Rob Rodiek in Facilities.  For more information e-mail sustain@auburn.edu or visit this link.

The AU Recycling Program has been collecting single-stream or mixed recycling in 50 dumpsters for the past four years. As of December 2008, AU lost its market for single stream material and was not able to identify another potential buyer for this material due to the drop in recycling markets world wide. Since the university's recycling program could not market their single-stream recyclables to another company, the recycling program has decided to convert its collection program from single-stream to sorted stream collection. Starting in August 2009, all recyclables on campus will be collected in 3 separate material streams: mixed paper, beverage containers (plastics #1 & #2 and aluminum/steel cans) and cardboard. To start this conversion from single-stream to sorted stream, the recycling program will begin to convert all of its recycling dumpsters to cardboard only. This conversion will start May 18th and end mid June. Once all of the dumpsters are converted cardboard will be collected in the dumpsters and mixed paper and beverage containers will be collected separately in blue 90 gallon roll-carts located on the loading dock or near the cardboard and trash dumpsters. Please advise your department that the desk-side recycling program will go off-line during this time in order for the conversion to take place. If you have any questions concerning this conversion process, please contact AU Recycling at aureuse@auburn.edu or 844-9461.

“Recycle Your Sweats” is a 14-week national charity drive sponsored by Victoria’s Secret PINK on select college campuses across the country. From September through December, Auburn students will have the opportunity to drop off used clothing in the designated bin located on the front patio of Tiger Rags, Inc. on Magnolia Avenue until Dec. 10. Weekly donations will be taken to the Domestic Violence Intervention Center of Alabama in Opelika by VS PINK Campus Brand Reps. Campus Brand Reps have been selected by VS PINK on 15 college campuses to promote the brand and help to run the “Recycle Your Sweats” program. VS PINK has selected Heather Hall and Jenna Nash as Auburn’s VS PINK Campus Reps. Heather is a sophomore Apparel Merchandising major and Jenna is a sophomore Public Relations major. Donations of men’s, women’s and children’s clothing items and shoes are accepted. Please contact the PINK Campus Brand Reps or visit http://www.vspink.com/on_campus.jsp for more information and to see which school is in the lead. Help Auburn win and be recognized nationally by Victoria's Secret!

AU Recycling will hold PaperJam '08 on the Haley Center concourse and Roosevelt concourse May 2, 5 and 7 from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. each day. You know how you always have a ton of notes at the end of the semester that you'll never need again? AU Recycling has decided to try to capture some of that paper before it hits the landfills. They also will be collecting any unwanted notebooks and binders.