While many colleges in the nation are experiencing madness due to NCAA basketball tournament rivalries, others are getting manic for another reason.

Ohio University Southern is one of 630 schools in a competition where everyone has the same team color: Green.

The RecycleMania Tournament pits colleges and universities against each other to find out who can reduce, reuse and recycle the most on-campus waste in a ten-week period.

So far, OUS has collected over five tons of recyclable waste since the tourney started in February, putting them second in the state of Ohio behind Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea. The school is also currently ranked 29th in the nation.

Adam Riehl is the director of facilities management at OUS and is coordinating RecycleMania for the campus.

“We’re really pushing hard to try and reach that number one ranking for the state of Ohio,” he said. “I think that would be a neat achievement for us.”

Riehl said the school is just shy of a 50 percent waste-to-recycling ratio.

The rules are simple. Faculty, staff and students must remember to place recyclables into one of the many blue bins on campus. Each week, the content of the bins will be weighed and the data recorded. All OUS facilities are participating including Ironton, the Proctorville Center, the Ohio Horse Park, the OUS Child Development Center, the Nature Center, and Business and Resource Training Center in South Point.

This is the third year OUS has participated in the tournament, but the first year to be in competition with other schools.

Riehl said the friendly competition each year helps to renew interest in recycling.

“As new students come in, this gives us an opportunity to reintroduce our programs and procedures to them,” he said. “I think this program is perfect for that.”

The contest ends April 2 and final totals will be announced the following week.