EPA Challenges Colleges To Recycle At Football Games

Washington,DC - As part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 2010 Game Day Challenge, colleges across the country will compete to see who can reduce, reuse, and recycle the most waste. Registration for the competition is now open and the winning colleges will be announced in November.

Any college or university in the U.S. with a football team can compete, and register through September 30. The challenge is for schools to design a waste reduction plan for one home football game in October and measure the results. Schools can collect common materials for recycling including paper, beverage containers, cardboard, and food to be donated and composted. The amount of waste generated and recycled will determine which school is the greenest.

Schools can win in several categories:

least amount of waste generated per attendee

• greatest greenhouse gas reductions
• highest recycling rate
• highest organics reduction rate (i.e., food donation and composting)
• highest combined recycling and composting rate.

Winners will be publicized on EPA's website.

The competition is sponsored by EPA's WasteWise program, a voluntary program through which organizations eliminate costly municipal solid waste and select industrial wastes, benefiting their bottom line and the environment. Launched in 1994, the program has more than 2,700 members.

To register for the Game Day Challenge: https://my.re-trac.com/gameday

More information on the Game Day Challenge: http://epa.gov/gameday/

More information on WasteWise program:
http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/partnerships/wastewise/index.htm

SOURCE: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Making Your Own Solar Panel or Wind Turbine

A solar cell is a device for converting energy from the sun into electricity.

The high-efficiency solar cells you can buy at Radio Shack and other stores are made from highly processed silicon, and require huge factories, high temperatures, vacuum equipment, and lots of money.

If we are willing to sacrifice efficiency for the ability to make our own solar cells in the kitchen out of materials from the neighborhood hardware store, we can demonstrate a working solar cell in about an hour.

Our solar cell is made from cuprous oxide instead of silicon. Cuprous oxide is one of the first materials known to display the photoelectric effect, in which light causes electricity to flow in a material.

Thinking about how to explain the photoelectric effect is what led Albert Einstein to the Nobel prize for physics, and to the theory of relativity.

You can now make solar panels at home. You have probably read about it or seen it on TV. Click Here for a guide that will help you build your own solar panel.

Wind power is a great backup for when you have long periods of cloudy days. So, it makes sense to build a wind turbine too. Click here for Wind Turbine Info.