I gave up on the Recyclemania’s food recycling category because the numbers seemed to fluctuate so much. Rutgers was the runaway leader at one point, but now they’ve stopped reporting their data.

A food recycling competition is tricky. It’s certainly better to have less food per student being recycled or thrown away. But the category seems to reward colleges that have a glut of tossed food to recycle. Then again, schools–like my alma mater Wesleyan–with a minute amount probably aren’t recycling much of the food that is wasted. That’s not a great thing, either.

As someone at Harvard recycling told me–this is probably a category where you want to be somewhere in the middle.

Finally, I agree: props to Ohio U for getting today’s college students thinking about recycling. Especially considering this from the Times article:

“When you look at demographics, the 18- to 24-year-old sector makes little if any effort to recycle,” she said. “It is heartbreaking for those of us who have been in the field for a long time.”

Guess there’s no time to recycle when you have Facebook and My Space profiles to update.

What’s amazing that a huge school - Univ. of Maryland - is recycling only 1.8 pounds of food per person this year.

Does that mean they are the best of cleaning their plates or they just don’t recycle? What’s the average food waste at a college?

Finally, kudos to my alma mater — Ohio University — for starting recycle maniacs in 2001. BTW, OU has nothing to do with Ohio State University, for those watching the game today.