The Conservation and Recycling Efforts campaign within the Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group will hold the annual Trash Sort"" campaign Friday in Library Mall from 12 to 3:30 p.m.
Members of CARE will collect trash bags from several university buildings, including residence halls, libraries, cafeterias, unions and classrooms to sort out recyclable materials.
""Recycling is one of the best [things] that we can do to help out the environment ... It's a really simple step that makes a really big difference,"" WISPIRG Chair Tony Uhl said.
Trash Sort is CARE's first campaign in a yearlong recycling initiative and is a part of a larger national effort.
""RecycleMania"" will take place next semester as a 10-week competition among colleges across the nation for the highest recycling rates.
""Only 23 percent of water bottles are getting recycled out of all the billions of water bottles out there,"" CARE member Sarah Bartlett said.
According to Devin Trezise, co-coordinator of CARE, Trash Sort occurs twice a year and the majority of collected trash from last semester was recyclable.
""The results were pretty surprising actually,"" Trezise said. ""We calculated the weight of recyclables that were still on the way; it was over 50 percent. Fifty-eight percent of the trash that we sorted was either recyclable materials or [compost] materials.""
According to Trezise, many students are confused about what materials can be recycled.
Uhl said the group organized Trash Sort to educate students and staff on recycling and to give them a visual of how much trash is thrown away every day.
""Students can come take part and talk to us and learn what is actually being thrown away and why we need to make sure we know what can be recycled,"" Uhl said.
Bartlett said the goal of CARE is to increase student awareness of recycling and to implement new strategies on the UW-Madison campus and throughout the Madison area.
""I think [recycling] is an easy step that we can do to help not only our community, but also to help carbon emissions and to save some money,"" she said. ""Overall, it's just to make a greener Earth ... It's time to go green.
