The National Union of Students has teamed up with Coca-Cola to launch an amazing new national recycling competition in UK universities. RecycleLeague brings the successful RecycleMania competition from the USA to the UK for the very first time.

 The University of Warwick is one of eleven universities who as part of the initial pilot project, will be competing to see which can improve their recycling rates the most, competing for coveted golden recycling bins and a £15,000 top prize.

As a University we have until the end of November to reduce our overall waste and improve our recycling. For this we must all work together and educate ourselves and each other on the correct things to put in each bin. The Sustainability Team ask that you please check the signage each time you put something in the bins to ensure the item goes into the correct one. The University signage can also be found here.

Remember to make use of the waste hierarchy below to avoid waste and reuse where possible. Further information can be found via the Recycling pages or by emailing Sustainability@warwick.ac.uk

Coca-Cola is funding the competition as a way to inspire and encourage staff and students to recycle more and to drive innovation in recycling, in line with their sustainable packaging strategy, which aims to ensure all their packaging is recycled.

 

David Chapman (Sustainability Champion – Waste and Recycling) said: “We’re excited to be a part of NUS RecycleLeague pilot. We hope that this friendly recycling competition will engage with staff and students and help to increase our recycling rates whilst having some educational fun. For the duration, we’ll be holding activities such as a Swap Shop and information stands. We also encourage people to donate items via the red British Heart Foundation banks across campus and at the Food Donation point at Rootes Grocery Store and CCSG has recently launched the Too Good To Go app on campus and you can download the Olio app to share food with neighbours; you can also use the Refill app to find water bottle refill points. We also have more reStore events on the way to help people upcycle and fix items for reuse rather than wasting them.”

 

Jamie Agombar, Head of Sustainability at NUS, said: “We are pleased to build on our commercial relationship with Coca-Cola through this fun pilot. Recycling is so important, but it has become less of a priority for many students as commingled recycling bins and waste to fuel have become the norm. We are going to change that and make recycling the default on our campuses through friendly competition.”

 

Gordon McSkimming, Sustainable Packaging Manager at Coca-Cola European Partners, said: “We have a vision of a world without waste and sustainability has been at the heart of our business for many years. Our bottles and cans are 100% recyclable and we will be doubling the amount of recycled plastic we use in our bottles by 2020 – so encouraging people to recycle more often will help us to get that material back so that we can make it into new bottles and cans again. Alongside our community programmes, it’s great to be working with NUS on RecycleLeague giving campus communities the chance to be rewarded for their recycling efforts.”

 

The participating universities are:

Bath Spa University

University of Bath

Birmingham University

Cardiff Metropolitan University

City, University of London

Keele University

Kings College London

Nottingham Trent University

University of Warwick

Winchester University

University of Worcester

 

More about RecycleLeague here

Take part in the Warwick Waste Quiz by 1st December for the chance to win £20