Recycle-Bowl - Keep America Beautiful’s National K-12 Recycling Competition

Keep America Beautiful sponsors two school-based national recycling competitions each year: RecycleMania® for colleges and universities and Recycle-Bowl® for grades K-12. Recycle-Bowl® occurs annually from mid-October and culminates on America Recycles Day - November 15. The competition challenges participating schools to collect recyclables and use provided resources to track their collection over the month-long competition period.

Recycle-Bowl has gained so much popularity that, to date, over 1,200 schools across the US and Canada participate and the 2017 Recycle-Bowl® competition reached more than 550,000 students, with over 1,000 schools participating.

• In 2015, Indiana state champion Northwestern Middle/High School in Kokomo recycled over 36 pounds per student, defending their title for the fourth year in a row!
• In 2016, Bon Air Elementary in Kokomo stepped up their game and won the national title by recycling a whopping 48.7 lbs per student - that’s more than a lot of elementary students weigh!
• In 2017, Bon Air Elementary won again - a first for the national competition! And another Kokomo area school - Taylor Elementary - won most improved!

Bon Air received recycling containers from Busch Systems and a bench made from recycled water bottle caps for their efforts. Read more about Bon Air’s efforts here!

Recycle-Bowl is sponsored by Nestle Waters North America with generous in-kind donations from Busch Systems and TREX. Visit the Recycle Bowl website to find out more. The IRC highly encourages all IN schools to participate in Recycle-Bowl® this year!

 

 

 

 

RecycleMania - Keep America Beautiful’s National College Recycling Competition

The IRC proudly promotes Recyclemania Tournament - a nationwide recycling competition at colleges and universities! Since 2001, this friendly competition has served as a benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs and a fun way to promote on-campus waste reduction. Each spring, universities across the U.S. and Canada compete over an 8-week period reporting the amount of trash and recycling collected each week. Participation in the competition continues to grow each year (from 93 schools in 2006, 210 in 2007 and 400 in 2008)!

The competition has evolved significantly over the years. Schools are now ranked in several competition categories including highest recycling per capita, recycling rate as a percentage of total waste, and generation of the least amount of combined trash and recycling. Levels of participation currently include a ranked competition, unranked/self-benchmarking, recycling at a single home game, e-cycling only, zero-waste building, and campus engagement. Targeted materials include paper and paper-based packaging, aluminum, plastic bottles, electronics and food organics. Updated rankings are published online to allow schools to track their progress and rally to improve their standings against rival colleges.