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Alcoa Foundation Partners with University of Houston
for RecycleMania Campus Recycling Challenge
The Alcoa Foundation, in partnership with national nonprofit
Keep America Beautiful (KAB) and the College & University
Recycling Coalition (CURC), is providing 60 recycling bins to
University of Houston as part of its national bin grant program
to colleges and universities throughout the country during the
2012 RecycleMania collegiate recycling competition. The bin
grant program is an effort to help schools boost their results
during the competition, and expand their recycling collections
throughout the year.
Alcoa Foundation has awarded 32 grants to colleges and
universities, ranging from well-known large universities to
smaller schools. University of Houston will use its bins to
empower and educate students about recycling. In total, 20,000
recycling bins will be distributed on campuses throughout the
country.
“Our continued support of RecycleMania is designed to ignite
real change, to achieve one thing: dramatically higher recycling
rates,” said Beth Schmitt, director of recycling programs for
Alcoa. “Through the recycling bin grant program, we want to
encourage a social shift toward recycling on college campuses.
We want to show Millennials that recycling is not only the right
thing to do, it's the smart thing to do, and it’s something they
should be in the habit of doing long after they leave college.”
“We are deeply grateful for the support from Alcoa and Keep
America Beautiful for our recycling efforts,” said Leah
Wolfthal, Program Coordinator for Sustainability at the
University of Houston. “Receptacles are a fundamental element of
any recycling program, on which energized, creative and
pro-sustainability University communities rely to activate their
recycling empowerment campaigns. We are excited to further
develop our relationship with Alcoa and Keep America Beautiful.”
“RecycleMania provides colleges and universities with an easy
way to boost recycling on campus and to instill students with a
greater sense of obligation to recycle throughout their lives,”
said Matthew M. McKenna, president and CEO of Keep America
Beautiful. “We’re thankful for the support of Alcoa Foundation,
and for the company’s continued leadership in advancing
recycling nationwide.”
RecycleMania is a friendly competition and
benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs
to promote waste reduction activities to their campus
communities. During the competition, which runs Feb. 5 through
March 31, colleges and universities vie for top awards in nine
categories to see which schools recycle the most on a per capita
basis, produce the least amount of waste, and recycle the
largest percentage of their overall waste.
The University of Houston is competing in RecycleMania for the
fourth year and entered into the categories of waste
minimization, grand champion, per capita and gorilla prize in
this year’s competition. In addition to promoting the
university’s participation in the national contest, the
university also hosts an on-campus team competition where
student, faculty and staff organizations or groups will compete
against each other for a catering credit. This year, the teams
have been challenged to run their own recycling awareness
campaigns in order to energize and stimulate the campus’s
recycling efforts.
Since 2008, Alcoa has distributed more than 100,000 recycling
bins, launched the “Make an Impact” program to help families
live more sustainably, developed the free Aluminate™ recycling
app, and, in the last five years, invested nearly $3.5 million
in community-based recycling programs. Alcoa Foundation helped
kick off the 2011 RecycleMania competition by awarding 13
universities across the U.S. with thousands of stackable,
six-gallon bins appropriate for use in student housing and
offices. Alcoa’s recycling initiatives can be found at
http://alcoa.com/alcoa_recycling.
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a comprehensive national research
institution serving the globally competitive Houston and Gulf
Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential
learning and strategic industry partnerships. UH serves more
than 38,500 students in the nation’s fourth-largest city,
located in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region of
the country.
About Alcoa Foundation
Alcoa Foundation is one of the largest corporate foundations in
the U.S., with assets of approximately US$446 million. Founded
more than 50 years ago, Alcoa Foundation has invested more than
US$550 million since 1952. In 2011, Alcoa Foundation contributed
more than US$20 million to nonprofit organizations throughout
the world, building innovative partnerships, engaging its people
to improve the environment and educating tomorrow’s leaders. The
work of Alcoa Foundation is further enhanced by Alcoa’s
thousands of employee volunteers who share their energy, passion
and purpose to make a difference in the communities where Alcoa
operates. Through the company’s signature Month of Service
program, in 2011, a record 56 percent of Alcoa employees took
part in more than 1,200 events across 24 countries, reaching
81,000 children, serving 9,000 meals, planting 34,000 trees and
supporting 1,800 nonprofit organizations. More information can
be found at
www.alcoafoundation.com.
About Alcoa Recycling
Alcoa and the aluminum industry have a goal to increase can
recycling rates in America to 75% by 2015. To hit this goal,
Alcoa and the Alcoa Foundation have distributed more than 75,000
recycling bins, launched our Make an Impact calculator to help
families live more sustainably, created the Aluminate™ recycling
app and, in the last five years, invested nearly $3.5 million in
community recycling programs across the country. If every
American recycled just one more can per week, we would reach our
goal. Join us in this important effort, download the app, and
recycle. Together, we CAN make a difference. Visit
www.alcoafoundation.com.
About Keep America Beautiful, Inc.
Keep America Beautiful, Inc., established in 1953, is the
nation's largest volunteer-based community action and education
organization. This national nonprofit forms public/private
partnerships and programs that engage individuals to take
greater responsibility for improving their community
environments. For additional information, visit
www.kab.org.
About the College & University Recycling Council
The College & University Recycling Council (CURC) is a
membership-based nonprofit organization made up of collegiate
recycling and sustainability professionals seeking to exchange
technical knowledge and best practices on recycling and waste
reduction programs between institutions of higher learning.
Originally formed in 1992 as a technical council of the National
Recycling Coalition, CURC incorporated as an independent
organization in 2009. Today, CURC counts nearly 1,300 members
and is led by a steering committee made up of recycling and
sustainability program managers from universities across the
United States. Among other initiatives, CURC supports collegiate
recycling programs through a free webinar series, annual
workshops, a quarterly e-newsletter, the development of
best-practices manuals and toolkits. For more information, go to
www.curc3r.org.
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