University of Maryland, College Park
OP-T2-43: Move-Out Waste Reduction

UMD’s “Trash to Treasure” donation drive is a partnership with Goodwill, Student Government Assocition, Residence Hall Association, Residential Facilities, Resident Life and the campus Recycling Group in Facilities Management. Collection stations are set up around campus to collect donated material from residents as they move out of the halls. Donated materials include TVs, clothes, small pieces of furniture, small appliances, and carpets. In addition, "Terrapin Junktion", a community yard sale during Move-Out, provides an outlet for unwanted goods and benefits the surrounding College Park community by offering low prices for household goods.

Trash to Treasure is a program with roots starting approximately 10 years ago but was revitalized in 2011-2012 in an effort to expand the impact across all of the residence halls. The concept for the program has been to provide donation stations inside the residence halls (near service desks) and in external POD locations on South Campus to help make the opportunity to donate more appealing than disposing of unwanted items at move out. Working with multiple departments on campus (Sustainability, Facilities Management, Residential Facilities, Dining Services, Transportation Services and the Residence Hall Association), the week-long collection program has turned out to be a great success for the past two years.

For May 2013, we added Fraternity & Sorority Life (FSL) to the program and included collection opportunities for our FSL students. Our goal was to achieve similar success in comparison to the May 2012 collection. While the overall collection was a little less than in 2012, the overall disposal numbers were discussed to be lower across the board (including trash). I do not have those numbers available, but we estimated that there were a number of possible factors that could have affected the small reduction in numbers (including competing collection drives with Campus Recreation Services, the hectic end to the semester with the Bowie State Graduation and NCAA Lacrosse Tournament, better education to the students to affect a reduction of overall “stuff”, etc.). Still, we were very pleased with the overall collection and are prepared to make some adjustments to become a true staple of the move out program.

Unfortunately, we did not have the means to get exact amounts of items donated for some of the collections, but I have the approximations listed below.

Fraternities & Sororities – All Donations to Goodwill
- 66 Large Trash Bags, including clothing, shoes, books, kitchen supplies, etc.

- 4 Refrigerators

- Unknown number of lamps

- Total volume: Approximately 2/3 of a 24’ Trailer Truck

Residence Halls & Larger Campus Collection for Recycling
- 2.51 Tons of Carpet

- 4 Tons of Metal

- 2 Tons of Paper

- 68 Tons of General Recycling

- 4 Tons of Wood

Residence Halls & Larger Campus Donations to Goodwill & Capital Area Food Bank
- ½ of 16’ Box Truck of Mini Fridges

- One 16’ Box Truck of Televisions

- One 24’ Trailer Truck of General Donations to Goodwill, including clothing, shoes, books, kitchen supplies, etc.

- 40 Shopping Bags of Food Donations to the Food Bank