AmOnline.com |

Aramark Higher Education, a world leader in providing professional services to more than 600 colleges and universities in North America, is proud to recognize 142 campus partners that recycled almost 12 million pounds of waste (paper, corrugated cardboard, bottles and cans, and food service organics) in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) WasteWise RecycleMania 2008 program, an annual recycling competition among colleges and universities nationwide.

"We are extremely proud of the effort of our campus partners during RecycleMania 2008," said Chris Stemen, senior director of sustainability and environmental Stewardship, Aramark Higher Education. "Through a series of promotional initiatives, including national web seminars, marketing programs and campus events, we have helped to create awareness and drive participation among our clients and customers. This was our fourth year participating and we saw a 150 percent increase in participation by our clients, including 90 first time participants."

RecycleMania 2008 is a competition among college and university recycling programs across the U.S. that provides the campus community with a proactive activity in waste reduction. Over a 10-week period (January 27 -- April 5, 2008), campuses competed in different contests to see which institution could collect 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. This year, all participating schools in the competition recycled 58.6 million pounds of waste.

On hundreds of campuses throughout North America, Aramark Higher Education has implemented programs and initiatives focused on ecology, conservation and environmental stewardship to teach students the value of protecting the earth. In 2007, the Company received the EPA WasteWise Endorser of the Year Award for its support and promotion of RecycleMania. The award recognizes organizations for extraordinary efforts to reduce waste.

RecycleMania is supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's WasteWise program and the National Recycling Coalition (NRC), and is coordinated as a project of NRC's College and University Recycling Council (CURC).