Normally, the trash talk ends after the game. At Richmond, it's just getting started.

After last night's win over Davidson, a group of students, staff, and faculty donned tyvex suits and gathered on the Robins Center promenade to sort through the trash, recycling, and compost collected the night before.

This waste audit measures how well UR stacked up when diverting materials from the landfill. The insights will help inform future sustainability planning for signage and bins around campus. It's also part of a friendly competition called Recyclemania with other universities.

As it turns out, we won the game and the effort to reduce our waste.

"For this game, we managed to divert 85 percent of what was thrown away from the landfill," explains Rob Andrejewski, UR's chief green spider. "That’s more than three times the normal rate! We definitely exceeded our expectations. The biggest difference was that we collected organics – food waste, compostable food service items, and other products that break down in an industrial compost facility."

Way to go, Spiders! We're well on track to achieve a bold goal of 80 percent diversion from landfills!