Every year, millions of college students across the United States, pack up their dorms and dispose of tons of undamaged and completely reusable items including furniture, electronic equipment and household items.
To help reduce the amount of annual waste produced by universities, a group of students from the University of New Hampshire has come up with a innovative solution to the problem: collecting and then reselling all of the reusable waste that students leave behind.
The project was started after Alex Freid, a then freshman at the University of New Hampshire, noticed a futon sticking out of a dumpster on the university campus. Astonishingly, even at first glance, it was clear that the futon was in near perfect condition. “That’s perfect!” he thought. “I can grab that futon and use it for my apartment next year.” As Freid further inspected the futon, he noticed that the dumpster was almost entirely filled with usable items.
Upon realizing the amount of usable items that find their way into college dumpsters every year, Freid and a group of his friends started a campus organization called Trash2Treasure. Every year, during the month of May, the organization collects the usable items students dispose of when they move out. These items are then put into storage over the summer, before being resold back to students in a yard sale the following fall.
Finally, the money the organization makes from the ‘move-in sale’ is cycled back into the program, allowing them to continue their work the following year.
In 2013, prompted by the success of the Trash2Treasure’s program, Freid founded a national non-profit called the Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN) to help other colleges across the nation establish a similar waste prevention program.
To do this, the non-profit is working to build a national network of student groups within what PLAN describes as a student-led zero waste movement. The purpose of this network is to help students recreate these programs through nationwide communication.
“Every day we receive questions from committed student leaders looking for answers to problems that other campuses have already solved,” says Alex Freid, founder and executive director of PLAN. In order to prevent this from continuing, PLAN successfully raised more than $11,000 to set up an online resource for students across the country. According to a statement released by the organization, construction for the database began in early August and is expected to launch on October 1st.
“A lot of campuses are constantly reinventing the wheel and creating the same documents, same resources, doing the same research,” Alex said.
“Basically,” explained Alex, “[It will be] an online space where students can collaborate and coordinate, discuss programs, develop logistics, upload and download resources for free, and share information with each other.”
In the video above, members of PLAN explain in detail how their online resource will help students nationwide establish similar recycling programs at their own universities, allowing such work to spread across the country faster and more effectively. So far, PLAN has expanded to 50 U.S. campuses, significantly preventing the disposal of tons of unnecessary waste .
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