In a rare win-win-win situation, a group of college students has flexed its creativity to create a new program that has drastically reduced waste, provided important donations for homeless services, and allowed cash-strapped college students to get dorm room essentials for free.
The University of San Diego’s Changemaker Hub spearheaded the initiative, dubbed “Eco Exit,” according to an article posted to the USD News Center.
“The Changemaker Hub fosters a university-wide ecosystem that strengthens the collective capacity of our students, faculty, staff, and community partners to address humanity’s most urgent challenges through meaningful, sustainable, and innovative collaborations in order to advance USD’s mission,” per the organization’s website.
For the Eco Exit initiative, Changemaker Hub members collected still-usable items that otherwise would have been discarded as students vacated their dorm rooms the previous spring. As the new school year began in the fall, incoming students were able to claim the items at the group’s temporary, makeshift thrift store, which they named “Torero Thrift” after the school’s mascot, according to the USD News Center article.
Additionally, more than 50 mattress toppers were donated to a local homeless services organization.
“We saved about 4.3 tons of waste that would have gone to the dump,” Lilly Tebaldi, a USD sophomore and the Torero Thrift student leader, said, per USD News Center. “It was a big success at the end of last year and seeing this is awesome because students are able to look around, see what they need and grab it — and it is better that it’s getting used.”
By passing on the used items to students free of charge, the program not only saved students money but also prevented those items from ending up in the trash. It also avoided the environmental harms that come from manufacturing new products and shipping them to stores.
Across the U.S., college students produce roughly 200 million tons of waste every single year, according to CheckSammy, a sustainability company. A large percentage of this waste comes when students move out of their temporary housing at the end of each school year.
For example, at the University of New Hampshire, students generated roughly 25 tons of waste per month. During moveout, however, this figure jumped more than fourfold to 105 tons, according to Earth Island Journal.
As the USD’s Eco Exit initiative has shown, much of this waste has consisted of still-usable goods. Torero Thrift offered new and returning students everything from microwaves, couches, and minifridges to smaller items like closet organizers, hangers, and mugs — all free of charge.
“We talk about how we care for our environment and Care for our Common Home,” Juan Carlos Rivas, a member of the Changemaker Hub, said, per USD News Center. “This is a tangible example of how we are actually encouraging collaboration and building that culture in which every student from the moment they step into campus, they know this is how we operate.
“We care for things, we actually repurpose things and don’t produce more waste than we need to,” Rivas added.
In the long run, these lessons could end up being as valuable as any college coursework.
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