From the moment I entered junior high school, the words: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, were branded into my brain by one adamant, on the verge of obsessive, social-studies teacher. This overzealous man was in charge of lunch periods. He stood at the front of the school’s cafeteria every day to check that students were putting the remains of their lunch in the appropriate garbage bins, each of which had careful labels as to ensure that all students recycled their waste properly. And, I can assure you, anyone who failed to abide by the labels — well, let’s just say that was made known to everyone in the entire lunchroom.

I can honestly say I was so mortified at the thought of not recycling my juice carton — let alone recycling it incorrectly — that I would often stand at the front of the lunchroom looking inquisitively at the selected bins for a good couple of seconds before I dared to place something in a container.

While every school has its own way of doing things, this outlandish method was mine. Although it may have not been the most ideal (heck, a little out there), it got me to understand the importance of recycling at an early age, and it was no longer something I had to think about. I did out of habit.

Nearly 10 years later, though, I am baffled at the lack of recycling opportunities on the U. Iowa campus. Particularly when programs exist such as RecycleMania — a competition program among colleges nationwide.

According to the RecycleMania website, it is a benchmark tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste-reduction activities.

In the 2010 competition alone, more than 600 schools registered, and participants recycled more than 84 million pounds of material during the course of the competition, according to the site.

While the UI has not stepped into the RecycleMania ring yet, Liz Christiansen, the director of the UI Office of Sustainability, assured me that the university has made several attempts in terms of promoting recycling on campus in recent years.

“I think we have some areas of good performance, and there are areas we need to improve on,” she said.

The university is at around 30 percent in terms of diverting waste from the landfill, she said, and officials are always looking for more ways to promote recycling around campus.

“[Currently] our recycling performance has leveled,” Christiansen said.

However, that is not extremely unusual, she noted. She anticipates changes to the recycling program occurring over the next year or so, and the UI tried a pilot project in January that has yielded positive results.

On the second and third floor of the University Services Building, Christiansen said, officials have implemented what is known as a desk-side collection of trash. Basically, what this means is there are no longer custodians to collect trash at the end of each day, but instead, they are now requesting that people take their allocated trash to a certain spot on each floor themselves, where they are given the choice to divvy up their allotted waste (recyclables included) into the appropriate bins.

Christiansen said trash has been reduced by 33 percent since the plan was implemented, and overall recycling has increased as well.

I for, one think, this is a great idea; however, I still feel projects such as RecycleMania might be just what we need.

So I proposed the possibility of RecycleMania on campus to Christiansen.

She said the UI needs to make some changes to its recycling performance before we take on something to that extent. While there are definitely other colleges out there that are worse off, there are certainly some that are doing better than us, she said.

“I know we can do better at recycling, I’m confident we can,” she said.

While overzealous social-studies teachers patrolling lunchrooms are one effective method, I am hopeful the UI can build its recycling program and maybe one day participate in RecycleMania to give students (a less frightening) incentive to want to recycle.