WasteWise Program

WasteWise is a voluntary US Environmental Protection Agency Program that encourages companies, institutions, and organizations to reduce their municipal solid waste. Information about membership, benefits, and award winners is available on the WasteWise web site. Also, the WasteWise Program provides a list of members by state and region.

RecycleMania

RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. Over a 10-week period, schools report recycling and trash data which are then ranked according to who collects the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, or have the highest recycling rate. With each week's reports and rankings, participating schools watch how their results fluctuate against other schools and use this to rally their campus communities to reduce and recycle more.

EPA Region 3 recruitment efforts resulted in Nation-leading representation for RecycleMania 2010. With outstanding support from all of the Region 3 State Agencies, the College and University Recycling Council (CURC) RecycleMania Steering Committee, the Professional Recyclers of Pennsylvania, the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania, numerous other support organizations, and the colleges/universities who hosted informational meetings and shared their experiences, Region 3 contributed 101 of the 607 schools that registered for RecycleMania 2010. Of the 101 schools, 14 schools were new registrants for the year's competition. Unfortunately, due to a variety of issues, there were also a number of previous participants who could not participate during the 2010 competition. Those schools hope to rejoin the 2011 RecycleMania competition.

For the fourth consecutive year, every Region 3 State and the District of Columbia were represented in the competition and Region 3 registered the most schools of any EPA Regional Office. CURC also confirmed that, for the fourth consecutive year, Pennsylvania led all of the States with a total of 51 schools registered for the competition that began on January 17, 2010 and continued through March 27, 2010.

Region 3 will be presenting an Award of Excellence to the top school in each state for achieving the rank of Number 1 in their state in the Per Capita Classic category.

Please feel free to review the list of Participating Schools.

Results for RecycleMania 2010 were posted on the RecycleMania web page.

If you have any questions or contact information for non-participating schools, please email Donna McGowan, EPA Region 3 Recycling Program Manager, or call her at 215/814-5197.

Waste and Material Exchanges

Waste and material exchanges provide a link for the recycling and reuse of unwanted materials. Most exchanges assist in matching buyers and sellers by allowing subscribers to post descriptions of available or wanted materials. Exchanges tend to be "self-service" in nature and do not participate in negotiating transactions.

Some state agencies support exchanges in an effort to encourage the recovery of unwanted post-industrial and post-consumer materials and to assist companies in reducing their disposal costs.

State-supported exchange in the Mid-Atlantic region:

West Virginia Materials Exchange
Sponsored by the West Virginia Solid Waste Management Board.

Links to other state-specific and national exchanges:

Materials and Waste Exchanges
Provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/Jobs Through Recycling.