Stark State College Top Ten in Recycling

 (North Canton, OH – May 21, 2012) – Stark State College is among the grand champions of recycling. SSC finished in tenth place of the recent national RecycleMania competition.

The friendly competition is a benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities, tracked over an eight-week period each spring. Official results are available at www.recyclemania.org.

Along with Stark State’s Top Ten finish in the grand champion category, the College took third place in the paper recycling category and led the way for Ohio institutions in both cases, according to Stefanie Smith, SSC sustainability coordinator.

As a measure of the success of this year’s competition, SSC recovered 259,654 pounds of recyclable materials, preventing the release of greenhouse gases equivalent to the annual emissions from more than 109 passenger cars or the electricity use of nearly 54 homes.

Along with a college-wide sustainability campaign of “reduce, reuse and recycle paper, plastic, glass and metal cans,” SSC held an interoffice competition for faculty and staff, a daily Facebook trivia contest and discounts on “green” items in the College Store.

Also, student groups made and sold recycled notebooks they created from cereal boxes and the recycled paper. A display of plastic bags in the Student Center showcased the 500 plastic bags the average American uses each year. For more information about Stark State’s sustainability programs, go to www.starkstate.edu/goinggreen.