SURPLUS WANTED

Library bookshelves! Contact us if you have any to donate to a non-profit organization.

SURPLUS FURNITURE

Surplus Furniture and other items are available at our Recycling and Surplus Center in Allston every Thursday 11-2! If donating furniture, please instruct your movers to contact us 24 hours before delivery so that we can receive and display everything safely. We can take material only from Harvard buildings which use our waste and recycling services, and we can never receive any trash or hazardous waste.

When donating file cabinets and desks, please unlock, open up and clean out all drawers. We cannot receive any furniture with unknown contents. Likewise, please make sure all computers, smart phones and other electronic devices are purged of any confidential information. Harvard recycling does not shred or otherwise destroy any confidential materials we pick up or that are delivered to the recycling and surplus center. Thus it is the responsibility of the donor or recycler to make proper arrangements to protect confidential information. Please call us if you need extra recycling barrels or more pickups when cleaning out offices and furniture. Also, please ask us for contact information for confidential destruction vendors serving the campus.

Please keep in mind that parking space limitations force us to be STRICT ABOUT PARKING RULES. Please respect our neighbors' need to maintain safe traffic flow around the Recycling and Surplus Center. When here for Thursday's Surplus Distribution, follow the parking monitor’s direction and park only in designated areas. You may also park in the free spaces in the streets adjacent to the property. If you are interested in seeing any of the items now available, come to our Recycling and Surplus Center at 175 North Harvard Street in Allston any Thursday from 11 to 2 PM. A street map showing our location is here. Everything is free, first-come, first-served and open to everyone.

Illustration By Matt Smith, Winning CERtoon from 2008

EARTH MONTH greens up Harvard, offering members of the University community a dozen different ways to reduce and recycle materials:

• April 14, an FAS-wide panel announces the results of the Office for Sustainability (OFS) CERtoon competition. (See Matt Smith’s winning entry from 2008 above.) Look for exhibits of the winning CERtoons in the Harvard Credit Union, Holyoke Center Arcade and other gallery spaces around campus.
• April 17, the Harvard Garden hosts its first volunteer work day at 54 Mount Auburn Street. Congratulations to Eric Chivian of the Medical School’s Center for Health and the Human Environment; students Zach Arnold, Louisa Denison, Rebecca Cohen, Gracie Brown (and many others) for this green collaboration. Wayne Carbone, Manager of Harvard Landscape Services, has offered extensive help building walkways, raised beds and composter set-ups in advance of the work day. The Garden will use organic refuse from campus horticulture and food preparation as compost feedstock, helping close the loop on organic waste. Read more about the Harvard Garden here.
• April 22, Dining Services celebrates Earth Day with the Sustainability Dinner at House Dining Halls, with all dishes prepared from locally-sourced foods and all refuse being either recycled or composted. Read more here.
• April 23 at 1 PM, OFS hosts a Sustainability Fair at Memorial Hall transcept, with student and staff programs to reduce waste (including Harvard Recycling). We will be raffling off many green prizes!
• Later the afternoon of April 23, OFS presents the Green Carpet Awards at Sanders theater, acknowledging green heroes from among students, faculty and staff. Also, winning Green Videos will premier! Videos and nominations are due to OFS Friday, April 9. Forms are available here.
• Saturday, April 24, the Undergraduate Environmental Action Committee hosts their annual Earth Day fair at the Malkin Athletics Center Quad, with still more give-aways and inter-active exhibits, including Yard tours, Harvard Garden tours, Greening your Dorm Room, Recycling Trivia Table, and a Bottled Water Taste Test.

HARVARD LEADS IVIES IN RECYCLING

HARVARD LEADS IVIES IN RECYCLING through Week 9 of RecycleMania! So far, the Crimson sets the pace not only in total tons recycled, but also in the Grand Champion competition (best basic recycling rate). We trail only Princeton in the Per Capita Recycling rate competition by a mere one ounce per week. This is the weight of four sheets of copy paper, or one plastic bottle! Let’s deny the Tigers bragging rights over us by recycling just a little bit more. See final RecycleMania results 4-16-10 here:

VALENTINE'S DAY COSMETICS PARTY

Cambridge Family Shelter residents send a fat envelope of photos and thank-you notes for our donations to their VALENTINE'S DAY COSMETICS PARTY last month. See all the pictures and notes at the Harvard Recycling facebook page. Read some of the notes below:

"Thank you so much for the nice donations. Everything was great and very useful. Thank you. There are still wonderful people in this world. Greatly appreciated." DB

"Thank you so much for all the wonderful donations. You have no idea how much this helps me! I can not afford these products normally so having them makes me feel beautiful in the inside & out!" SH

"Thank you all so much. I enjoyed the party and am using the products I received as gifts. God bless you and your loved ones." LG

JOHN HARVARD'S GREEN & THRIFTY ARCHIVES

Discovered on April 1st, 2010! Our founder was amazingly far-sighted, not only by choosing to bequeath his library to a school with such promising potential in 1636, but also by his uncanny ability to coin proverbs inadvertently promoting environmental sustainability in our era. "Before you're through, Useth Side Two!" he admonishes. Read all the writings here.

Thanks to Dr. Sylvester "Sloof" Lirpa for bringing this to light!

FOGG ART MUSEUM REUSES!

The museum closed to the public this fall to begin a four year renovation project. Pete Atkinson, Director of Facilities Planning and Management for the Harvard Art Museum, led salvage efforts prior to construction. These efforts diverted approximately 60 tons from landfills. According to Pete, items included art exhibition crates and cases, light fixtures, fabrics, paints, two fume hoods, coat racks, lockers, shelving, cabinets, custom millwork and endless amounts of used office furniture. Pete writes, "Our recycling partners included Widener Library, Houghton Library, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, The Semitic Museum of Harvard University, American Repertory Theater, Harvard Fine Arts Library, Harvard Center for European Studies, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, Davis Museum, Beacon DIA, Charlestown Theatre, Cambridge Public Schools, Boston Public Schools, Somerville Public Schools, The Paul Rudolph Foundation, Extras of Creative Learning, Vernon Street Artist Studios, Brighton Allston Historical Society, Massachusetts State Police, and the Institution Recycling Network."

HLS SQUELCHES LEGAL WASTE

Environmental Law Society sets new waste-reducing requirements for law offices visiting HLS to recruit graduates. "Participating firms agree to limit their printed materials to one double-sided sheet; to replace bottled water with pitchers of tap water; and to use reusable cups at hospitality functions and receptions." Read more in "The Greening of the Law School" from the April 1 Harvard University Gazette here on Page 20

PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY comes to the U.S.

MAINE became the first state in the nation to enact a Producer Responsibility Framework Law! With the unanimous support of the Maine State Legislature and the Maine Chamber of Commerce, Governor John Baldacci signed the legislation into law this March 26th. Maine joins the European Union and the Province of Ontario to require manufacturers to make their goods and packaging more easily recovered for reuse, recycling or composting. Read more here.

Not to be out-done by the Pine Tree State, NEW YORK is thinking about requiring product manufacturers to pay cost of disposal for excess packaging or difficult-to-recycle items. Read more here.

CAMPUS NATURE WATCH

• As darkness falls, MOCKINGBIRD atop the crab apple on the Quincy side of Lamont sings its evening vespers.
  
  
• A female RED-TAILED HAWK (or hawks?) acclimates herself to the noise of Commuter Rail trains, shifting her pigeon-hunting perch from atop the Porter Exchange building to a lamp post between the train tracks (sometimes scared off with the rumble of the approaching trains); but eventually not budging from the post even when trains arrive from both directions at once.
  
  
• See Harvard Crimson Squirrel-eating Hawk Photos from Winthrop House courtyard:
  Pictures here
  
  
• Three SWANS swim on the Charles between the Anderson and Weeks bridges.
  
  
• LILACS leaf out in Yard and Sparks House; no sign of "grape-bunch" buds yet.
  
  
• Brilliant yellow FORSYTHIAS bloom above intense blue SCILLA at Sparks House in first sunshine in five days.
  
  
• Horticulturists heavily prune sickly CRABAPPLE TREES in front of Lamont, and reassure nervous Yardling that the trees should make it through another season.
  
  
• BUMBLE BEE checks out the crocuses blooming along the walkway to Loeb House.
  
  
• Three WITCH HAZELS unfurl crinkly yellow petals at the back entrance to Widener.
  
  
• Employees tend colorful pathway to Loeb House has yellow crocus on one side and purple on the other.
  
  

Thanks to Campus Nature Watchers Kate Brick, Will Graves, Erika McCaffery, Sonia Ketchian!

Contact Us

For information concerning Recycling and Solid Waste Removal, contact Rob Gogan, Supervisor of Recycling and Solid Waste Removal at 617-495-3042, or email rob_gogan at harvard dot edu