By Basille Jimenez, 12/10/15, CSUN AS Recycling
My name is Basille Jimenez and I work for California State University of Northridge Associated Students Recycling Coordinator Cyndi Signett. She told me about your interest in our America Recycles Day event, “Matadors in Recycleland,” which we held on November 12, 2015.
Inspired by the classic book Alice in Wonderland, we decided to change the name to benefit our campus; CSUN’s mascot is the Matador. Our goal was to educate and provide information to our campus community about the importance of recycling and living a more sustainable lifestyle as well as the promote clubs and organizations that CSUN partners with to encourage this behavior.
Some of the games we tied into our theme were:
This Way/That Way Speed Sorting – A sorting game where we provided 3 bins – bottles/cans, paper and trash, a pile of mixed materials and the person had to sort out the pile under a time limit.
Croquet – A simple game of croquet but the materials used to create the mallets were reused paper tubes, large plastic bottles and cardboard. Water bottles filled with water were used to ensure the wickets did not topple over.
Scavenger Hunt – Students were given clues that led to a specific tent or person, where they had to answer a question related to sustainability correctly or win a game to receive the next clue.
When planning, we ensured that all games and crafts we created were made of recycled materials collected by our Operations team throughout campus. We also gave away promotional items such as lunch containers and reusable water bottles to encourage students to reuse rather than purchase on campus as well as at home. We also repurposed many materials that we had stored in our basement. For example, Associated Students had surplus plastic cups they purchased for a prior event; rather than to toss them out like many organizations sadly do, we reused them to hand out popcorn and snow cones.
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