Capturing All Material Sources

To determine the per capita rankings, RecycleMania uses an FTE population for each school that includes all students, staff and faculty regardless of their location on a main campus, satellite campuses or remote research facilities, rented off-campus office locations, research facilities, etc. Schools have a direct incentive to account for all recycling and trash weights generated by these populations when reporting to RecycleMania to avoid an artificially low per capita ranking.

Ideally, all schools are able to track and account for materials generated at all school facilities. Many schools, however, have difficulty tracking from certain facilities on a regular basis, if at all. In such cases, RecycleMania allows schools to estimate recycling and waste materials from off-campus facilities within the following guidelines. Schools should make a good faith effort to research recycling and waste generation from such facilities as a basis to develop averages to incorporate into the overall weekly weight reports. A good faith effort in this situation might include determining: approximate collection bin capacity and frequency of collection; approximate population of facility; past material weights. One may not simply pull numbers out of the air.

These "static" averages may be combine with the actual weights from rest of the school when submitting weekly reports, as long as the represent no more than 25% of the school's total reported weights. In other words, up to 25% of the weight reported each week may be a static, unchanging estimate of off campus facilities, as long the remaining 75%+ is an actual weight or volume-to-weight estimate that fluctuates from week to week. Schools unsure on how to account for off campus facilities are encouraged to consult RecycleMania staff by calling (843) 278-7686.

 

Hospital Facilities

University hospital facilities are a unique situation. Academic-related students, staff and faculty working within hospital facilities are counted as part of the school's FTE population, whereas non-academic staff are not. Because of the inherent impossibility of separating academic from non-academic sources of recycling and trash, schools have two choices. They may exclude all hospital material weights from their reporting, which will results in a corresponding lower per capita ranking, or count all material weights along with providing the supplementary non-academic population from the facility(ies). To do the latter, the school will need to research through the hospital human resources department what the non-academic FTE population is and report the number during the registration process.