Several university campuses will be participating in the nationwide RecycleMania competition from Jan. 22 to March 31, an effort that encourages more than 500 participating colleges and universities across the country to promote recycling and waste reduction activities for the school’s recycling programs.

For every week during the event, the schools must report recycling and trash data. The RecycleMania staff will use this information to rank schools based on which institutions collect the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita and the highest rate of recycling. This rate is a combination of the trash and core recyclable materials used to determine a school’s recycling rate.

According to the RecycleMania website, the per capita results are determined by dividing a school’s weekly recycling and trash weights by its population of students, staff and faculty.

RecycleMania lasts for 10 weeks, although the first two weeks of the reporting period are technically counted as trial weeks and will not be counted in the final results. However, schools are still expected to submit data to the organization. The official competition begins Feb. 5 and lasts until March 31.

Materials that count for the 2012 RecycleMania competition include mixed paper, cardboard, and electronic equipment, including computers, printers, and other office electronics, cell phones and other hand-held devices, televisions, stereos, consumer electronics, ancillary items (chargers, cords, head sets, CDs), and consumer electronic batteries.

RecycleMania began in 2003 thanks to Ed Newman of Ohio University and Stacy Edmonds Wheeler of Miami University as part of a student-based initiative to increase recycling on their campuses. Since then the number of competing colleges and the amount of products recycled by students have both increased dramatically.