Put A Lid On It: Recycling Container Contest
By Jody Record, Media Relations
July 11, 2007
Furthering its recycling efforts, Campus Planning is sponsoring a contest
to see who can come up with a new design for the tops of the collection containers
located across campus.
The winner—who will be chosen based on the usefulness and practicality
of the lid design as well as the material source—will receive a round-trip
train ticket and another yet-to-be determined prize.
Which, of course, won’t compare to the satisfaction of knowing they
are helping to keep UNH green and saving the planet at the same time.
A student-driven initiative led to the installation of new outdoor recycling
cans, which are standard 20-gallon Rubbermaid containers with retrofitted
tops. The problem is, the company doesn’t make a standard blue recycling
bin or a lid with a hole that’s small enough for just cans and bottles.
That means trash and other non-recyclable materials end up in the blue-topped
bins instead of in trashcans.
Since February, when the containers began showing up on campus, recycling
compliance has been at about 80 percent. Changing the top of the can is one
more way proponents hope to push that number up even more.
So, the call is being put out to engineers, designers, faculty, staff and
students to craft a collar that will fit inside the lid and narrow the throat
of the receptacle so it will accommodate only cans and bottles.
The design should be functional, affordable, capable of being inserted or
retrofitted in the existing lids and, small enough to decrease the amount
of trash being thrown away in recycling containers.
The goal is two-fold: to increase recycling rates while decreasing trash.
Send ideas to: Stephen T. Pesci, special projects director, Campus Planning,
Ritzman Laboratory 22 Colovos Road, or email spesci@unh.edu or www.unh.edu/facilities.
Home | Archive | Schedule | Resources | Subscribe/Unsubscribe
