Incentives for Going Green

A recent citizen focus group explored ways to create incentives to recycle. 

  “Make a competition between the dorms,” said Dr. Earnest Stephens, the AGEM Statewide Project Coordinator for The University of Mississippi.  “The prize could be a cookout, I don’t know. But something to get the students involved and more educated about why they should be recycling, and they should have fun recycling.”

  No one argued that dorms should put forth efforts to recycle.  All attendants of the focus group fed off Stephens’ suggestion to come up with an interesting idea to make it work.  Dorms competing to see which one could recycle the most would be a great way to get more students involved, and if there is a reward for the winning dorm, then it should be that much more effective.  It could be easily done by calculating the number of pounds recycled per residents of each dorm. 

  Ashley Smith, a senior English major, suggested getting the Greeks involved. “The fraternities and sororities are always looking for something like that to be involved with, she said.”

Smith went on to explain how this idea might work.  Fraternities and sororities are constantly competing or in some cases working together to help others, raise money for charities, or just to accomplish a worthy goal.  Recycling, however, is not something the Greeks have tried to tackle yet.  It would be easy for these student organizations to start recycling efforts, and if they all worked together it could have surprisingly significant impact. 

  Another idea for creating incentives would combine benefits for both Oxford businesses and individuals.  All focus group participants agreed that recycling would increase if an Oxford business would support recycling by giving out coupons to individuals who recycle.  Not only would this make the business look good, it would get more people involved.

  Anna Kate Robbins, a sophmore public policy major, also came up with an interesting observation.  Right now, students might notice an occasional “Red, Blue and Green” sign or a sporadically placed recycling bin, but these give no incentive to recycle.  If the university would track the volume of material it recycles and show students the progress it makes, or lack thereof, it might create more of a performance based incentive for students to get more involved.  As of now, students do not know how much the university is recycling, and how much of an impact it is making.

  A primary theme recognized by the focus group is that Ole Miss is taking baby steps in the recycling direction, but it would not take much to launch a full-fledged, efficient effort.