UOS | Facilities Maintenance Operations | Recycling

See how Duke University audits its campus waste.

Thanks to Justin Ide for the link!

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Move-out Update

So far this move-out, Harvard Recycling has picked up 122 truckloads of reusables from 34 sites in Harvard dorms for donation to Harvard Habitat for Humanity and other charities.  We got 45 truckloads on Memorial Day weekend alone, and we haven’t started Senior Move-out yet. 

Last year Habitat and other charities raised over $92,000 from their sales.  This is far and away the biggest campus charity sale of reusables held anywhere in the nation.  Thanks for all your donations!  Thanks also to the HHH stalwart clothes-baggers, book-boxers and furniture shrink-wrappers Giselle, Jennifer, Winston, Sam, Stephen, and especially Captain Irina Perjar! 

If you live in a Harvard building that we do not serve and would like to deliver furniture, textbooks or clean clothing to Harvard Habitat for Humanity in Allston to help benefit their Stuff Sale fundraiser, please contact Captain Irina at [iperjar@fas.harvard.edu].

 

 

"Only the disciplined pursuit of greenest approaches to fishing will help resolve destructive policy conflicts between the fleet, its regulators, and the environmental watchdog groups monitoring both, favoring instead more productive cooperation."
~Philip C. Bolger & Friends

Thanks for reducing, reusing and recycling!

June 2008 - View Archive

June Harvard Recycling Update

Aerial Photo of Harvard Yard North - Special Thanks to the Harvard University Planning Office

Harvard is thrifty!  From July through this April this year, we have discarded only 4,835 tons of trash.  In 2004, we were at 5,980 scale weighed tons for the same period.  This represents a drop of almost 19%.  Thanks for all that waste reduction, reuse and recycling!

     Speaking of recycling, we have some new campus stars.  Based on our bi-annual bag counts, our new campus recycling leaders are the Graduate School of DESIGN and the Graduate School of EDUCATION, both with 60% recycling rates.  GSD is up from 51% in FY07 and GSE is up from 41% in FY07.  Also notable were the Divinity School (53%), the Business School (51%), and last but not least, Harvard College Library (74%).  Thanks for all this progress!

RECYCLING AT COMMENCEMENT

RECYCLING AT COMMENCEMENT will be bigger and better than ever before.  Led by Harvard University Dining Services star recycler Dave Seley, Manager of Adams House, HUDS has recovered well over half of its refuse from catered events so far.  At the 50th Reunion Dinner this Monday night, 60% of the refuse was recovered for recycling.   This is up from 20% last year.  Harvard Recycling has set up 451 field recycling stations to accommodate all the parties. 

Thanks to Dave Seley, Madeline Meehan and all the others at Crimson Catering who made this possible!

Campus Nature Walk

Thanks to Campus Nature Watchers Wayne Carbone, Betsey Cogswell, Nora Dahl, Rob Furrow, Liz Gilbert, Sonia Ketchian, Jean Martin, Erika McCaffrey, Ann Reynolds, and Bob Stymeist!

• A mother EASTERN COTTONTAIL RABBIT munches on the lush grass in front of Baker Library as she watches over her tiny kit who is also having lunch.
• SKUNK crosses Blackstone Street in front of the door nearest the loading dock and continues along the side of the building toward the courtyard.
• At Harvard University Press, ROBINS build a nest in a Crabapple tree in front and hatch two insatiable babies.  This is the same tree where last year's nest and babies got swept away in a bad rainstorm.  But this year's nest looks sturdier, is in a safer part of the tree, and has already made it through one torrent.  HUP staff watch eagerly (and a little anxiously) from 2nd floor window.
• Two unattended little white eggs sit in MOURNING DOVE nest but less than half
  an hour later the mother returns to her post for a third brood this Spring at 17 Sumner Road.
• AMERICAN REDSTART sings as it passes through Harvard Yard.  Female redstart flits busily after insects in the small maple behind Sever (Quincy side).
• CHIMNEY SWIFTS chirp high over the Yard.
• OVENBIRD belts out its "TEACH-CHA TEACH-CHA TEACH-CHA" song next to Naito Labs.
• NORTHERN PARULA warbler sings briefly among English Elms in Harvard Yard.
• YELLOW WARBLER sings a noon hour concert in Harvard Yard.
• Seven BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERONS line the SFR side of the Charles
  between the River Street and Western Ave. bridges waiting for their
  breakfast to swim by.  More black crowneds patrol the river heading up towards the Watertown Dam each late afternoon.
• GREAT BLUE HERON wades in the river bank below the
  River Street bridge… Two great blue herons fly south high over the river.  Another great blue flies over the Science Center, heading south [presumably towards the Charles].
• Gray CATBIRD moves through shrubs along the Soldiers Field Road side of the river.
• During the month of May, the grounds of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences behind the Center for World Religions hosts parade of migrants: 
  PINE WARBLERS
  BALTIMORE ORIOLES
  RED-EYED VIREOS
  NASHVILLE WARBLER
  YELLOW WARBLER
  MAGNOLIA WARBLER
  BLACK-THROATED GREEN WARBLER
  BLACKPOLL WARBLER
  CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER
  AMERICAN REDSTART
  COMMON YELLOWTHROAT
• SCARLET TANAGER sings high in the canopy of the AAAS grounds.
• Female BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER fatally collides with large windows of the Link bridge between Hoffman and the Museum of Comparative Zoology.  Her remains are respectfully added to the MCZ's permanent collection.
• Large REDTAILED HAWK drops from the sky, talons extended, and attacks a bird’s nest built insufficiently deeply back on one of the decorative tile extensions near the roof of the Fairchild Biochemistry building.  After several seconds of noise and commotion, the hawk flies off northward over Divinity Avenue with either a nestling or the brooding parent for its breakfast, leaving trailing remnants of the destroyed nest blowing in the wind.
• HOUSE FINCH hatchlings grow up and fly "off to college," leaving an empty nest atop an MCZ air conditioner.
• A happy Robin bathes and splashes in a late-spring puddle behind Grays Hall.
• Swarming HONEY BEE COLONY is safely extricated from Honey Locust in front of Lamont; bees begin their new lives in service to a professional bee keeper. 
• A large IVORY BUTTERFLY flits from bush to bush at 17 Sumner Rd. 
• A graceful Rosebud tree is in full bloom in front of Straus and red Buckeyes are blooming by the back entrance gate to Widener and the gate at Wadsworth House.
• The Tulip Tree is in bloom with big yellow flowers by the Sever Gate, just in time for the graduates mustering there Commencement Day.
• Mushrooms sprout on the north side of 17 Sumner Road.