Ecologue

Another academic year has come and gone at OSU, and with the end of the year came the annual Residence Hall Move-Out Donation Drive, an effort to encourage students to donate as much as possible as they move out of the residence halls. This year OSU beat last year’s record and exceeded our 20,000-pound donation goal by 122 pounds!

Donations collected included food, toiletries, bedding and linens, clothing, electronics, decor and other housewares. The 20,122 pounds collected was up from 17,558 in 2011 and 11,651 in 2010.

The material collected this year, by category:

• 7,932 lbs. of housewares
• 5,252 lbs. of clothing, linens and shoes
• 4,421 lbs. of reusable scrap wood
• 2,517 lbs. of food, toiletries and school supplies
• 571 lbs. of e-waste that was recycled (a new category of items that was accepted this year)

While a small portion of the donations go to the OSUsed Store to recoup the costs of the donation drive, the majority went to local nonprofits such as Linn Benton Food Share, The Cat’s Meow Thrift Shop, Love INC of Benton County and others. This helps the environment by keeping material out of our landfill and enabling perfectly good items to be reused, and it helps our community by getting materials into the hands of people who need them.

We kept all the loose socks and a volunteer is in the middle of making sets. The men’s and women’s cold weather shelters always run out of socks. When you are homeless and cold it’s not so important that your socks are an exact match – it is more important that your feet are dry. – Wilma Van Schelven, Executive Director of Love INC of Benton County

The donation drive is coordinated by OSU Campus Recycling, Surplus Property, and University Housing and Dining. This year 27 volunteers put in 83 hours of work collecting and sorting the donations.

To help students contribute to the donation drive, every room was provided with a move-out kit – color-coded bags in which to sort and an instructional door hanger – and donation bins were placed in every hall’s lobby. Recycling bins were also placed in lobbies, and picked up more frequently to accommodate extra material.

When all of these parties come together – students, OSU departments, volunteers and non-profits – it’s amazing how much we can capture that is no longer needed, and channel that to people who do need it. It benefits OSU and our entire community. – Andrea Norris, Outreach Coordinator for Campus Recycling and Surplus Property

For more information on the donation drive, visit http://recycle.oregonstate.edu, and check out the slideshow below for photos of the collection and sorting process: