From May 6 to 12, the University of Dayton hosted its annual Move Out Collection, during which over 60 volunteers helped collect, sort and distribute 26.38 tons (52,768 lbs.) of donated items.
This included 1,858 pounds of food, drinks, hygiene and cleaning supplies that were collected for the Brook Center’s Food4Flyers food pantry, and 732 pounds of food and other supplies to the UD Summer Appalachia Program. This year, students at the Hanley Sustainability Institute had the opportunity to rethink and grow the program.
“How would you describe campus move-out to someone who is removed from it?”
“If I had to describe it in one word: chaos. Everyone is just trying to survive through a stressful exam week, saying goodbye to their friends, trying to leave what has become their home, all while wondering how they managed to collect so much stuff throughout the year. Our goal with the Move Out Collection is to bring sustainability into the mess and ensure that the chaos does not bring about a lot of waste.”
This is a conversation I had recently that captures the essence of the last few weeks of school, and why we do a Move Out Collection. The end of the year is a whirlwind for everyone at all schools, but UD’s unique housing situation, with students living in dorms, apartments and houses, adds an extra layer to moving out.
During this period, it can be easy to simply discard things. Whether it's because you don't have time to pack it up or it doesn't fit in your luggage, there are many reasons people get rid of their belongings.
We want to ensure that these items don't end up in the landfill: “Donate, Don’t Dump.”
Taking over the Mac Gym in the RecPlex, volunteers spend hours each day going to campus donation sites, bringing donations back, sorting them, and then delivering them to partner organizations, all in an effort to make moving out as easy and efficient for everyone involved, especially students.
For many years, the Move Out Collection has been diverting waste to Goodwill. Recently, however, there has been a push to keep more goods on campus, thereby increasing the circular nature of the campus economy and benefiting our UD community.
The first step of this was to divert food and personal hygiene items to the Brook Center’s on-campus food pantry. The success of this encouraged HSI students and staff to expand to other items. It was decided that during move-out, certain commonly used items would be set aside from the main collection stream, sorted, stored and then distributed to students at the beginning of the year.
This year, HSI received the Clear into the Future grant from DuPont, which is being put towards a POD storage unit to store the items set aside until they can be distributed at the beginning of the school year. These collected goods included kitchen items (pots, pans, silverware, water bottles, plates, bowls), shelving, school supplies (pens, pencils, paper, binders, folders) and household items (fans, mirrors, desk organizers, lamps, command hooks).
This was my second year working on Move Out, and I was glad to see it grow. Working on the collection last year had such a significant impact on me and how I perceived waste on campus that I decided to center my personal project on increasing the capacity of items we can take through an increased volunteer force, while adding the new pop-up component.
I am excited to be able to divert items from the waste stream and then hand them out to students, allowing them to see a second life. The goal is to reduce waste produced from newly bought and donated items, as well as reduce the cost of living on campus.
As a sustainability major, I have learned about circular economies and how interlinked social justice and environmental issues are. This collection and distribution is a way for me to practice what I learn, finding solutions that intersect multiple issues. In this case, the issues are the environmental impact waste and other items have, along with the cost of living on campus, and doing my part to make it more accessible to people from many backgrounds, putting into practice the idea of a circular economy.
We plan on distributing the stored items to students from 4-8 p.m. Sunday, August 24, at the Art Street Amphitheater. We hope to see you there!