SURPLUS FURNITURE

SURPLUS FURNITURE and other items are available at our Recycling and Surplus Center in Allston every Thursday from 11 AM -- 2 PM. 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 FMO Recycling & Waste Services, and we can never receive any trash or hazardous waste. All loose items must be boxed in 24” x 40” bin boxes, staged on pallets. Movers must provide their own boxes, but pallets are available here.

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. Our preferred vendor is DataShredder at 1-800-622-1808.

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. Everything is free, first-come, first-served and open to everyone.

Here is a map, thanks to Peter Siebert of the Planning Office, showing the location of our Recycling and Surplus Center.

"A rind is a terrible thing to waste." Adrian Moreira and Trevor O’Brien proudly show off huge pile of clean compostables from Graduate School of Design Commencement Day luncheon. The only trash from the event: a few Lego blocks. Photo by Rob Gogan

Harvard held its GREENEST COMMENCEMENT ever this May. Faculties serving zero waste Commencement Day luncheons included the Divinity School (forgoing non-compostable petro-plastic salt packets for bulk salt cellars); the Graduate School of Design (where the only trash was giant plastic Legos a few of the graduates didn’t want from their mortarboards); the Senior Dinner for 7,000 (where 92% was recovered for composting or recycling); the Law School (where a team from Restaurant Associates and Law School Facilities sort out all recyclables and compostables in their private tent); and the 10th Reunion Field Day (where Dara Olmstead ’00 from the Office for Sustainability made sure all serviceware was compostable). Thanks also to the Kennedy School’s Gina Venturini who called in the BIG recycling compactor truck; the Ed School’s Jason Carlson and Linda Endicott, who composted and recycled a record amount; the Divinity School’s Jyoti Rana, who worked tirelessly to make their event trash free (and whom we hope gets well soon); Jen Piazza, who made sure recycling and composting was available at the big Radcliffe lunch on Friday; Courtney Shurtleff, Jennifer Halloran, Michele Blanc, Alex Monti, Jon Petitt, Gretchen Picken, Gary Gemmer, and the rest of the team at Alumni Affairs, who made sustainable events happen everywhere possible during Reunion Week; Ed Garland, who trained bartenders and bar-backs how to recycle at every catered function for the Major Reunions; and last but not least, Jason Luke, FMO Commencement Superintendent extraordinaire, whose commitment to sustainable events prevailed through the difficulties of schedule changes, cancellations, spontaneous events, cloudbursts, heat waves, and other events printable and unprintable.

 

STUDENT ENVIRONMENTAL INVOLVEMENT

Harvard Office for Sustainability has posted its new video on Harvard's STUDENT ENVIRONMENTAL INVOLVEMENT on Youtube! Hear several student environmental leaders and administrators (including Harvard FMO Recycling) talk about progress, opportunities and challenges on campus. Click below to see the five minute clip, which was produced by OFS’s Gosia Sklodowska and Ana Martin-Caughey '13:
http://green.harvard.edu/node/906

 

FREECYCLE ON THE SCIENCE CENTER LAWN

OFS also sponsored a Cambridge-campus-wide FREECYCLE ON THE SCIENCE CENTER LAWN Tuesday, 22 June. Starting with four seed hampers delivered by Harvard Recycling, visitors by the score came to drop off and swap everything from file folders to computers to children’s clothing. At least 20 cubic yards of goods were dropped and swapped, going to people who need them. Local reuse builds community, saves money and reduces trash. We love it! Another FreeCycle is coming back to the Science Center in August. Be on the lookout for details!

 

OVERSEAS SHIPPING CONTAINER TO HAITI

Harvard sent a second 200-cubic-yard OVERSEAS SHIPPING CONTAINER TO HAITI, for relief of the tragic earthquake. The container had 60 bed frames and mattresses, pillows, hundreds of dishware kitchen items, 400 pounds of cleaning products, and 400+ crutches! Thanks to Kristen Gunst of Harvard Divinity School, who coordinated delivery of many walkers, wheelchairs and other goods, Kathy Irving of Hammond Realty, and our deep gratitude to Gentle Giant Movers, who donated all the loading time, warehouse space and shipping costs to the Help Haiti Walk charity.

 

SUMMER SCHOOL STUFF SALE

Harvard Habitat for Humanity ran its biggest-ever SUMMER SCHOOL STUFF SALE, raising over $8,000 while providing Summer School students with mini-fridges, fans, waste baskets, and school supplies at prices half of retail. This more than doubled the take from previous years’ SS Stuff Sales. Congratulations to Captain Timo Kim ’10, Sean, Chelsea, Neal, Ally, Laura, and all the other HHH volunteers! HHH will hold a special Warehouse Sale on a weekend in late July. The next Science Center Stuff Sales will be in August. Keep this in mind when planning your back-to-school shopping, and check your emails from us!

 

U.S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS ADOPTS PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY RESOLUTION

The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) joined the National League of Cities and National Association of Counties in adopting a resolution calling for state and federal producer responsibility legislation that shifts the costs of managing problematic product and packaging waste away from taxpayers and local governments to producers and the consumers of their products. The resolution was prominently signed by our own David Maher, Mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts... How about a similar resolution on the part of Harvard departments & faculties? Read more here.

 

CAMPUS NATURE WATCH

• Red-tailed hawk shows its aquiline profile atop Soldiers Field Park garage. Transportation Services is giving this parker a free space in exchange for keeping the pigeons away. Photo by Dan Blair.
  
  
  
  
• Young red-tailed hawk, hours out of its nest, perches on Lyman Lab handrail. Early entrant from the class of 2014? Photo by Jay McNeil.
  
  




• RED-TAILED HAWK sits atop the golden spire of Memorial Church and flies off. Less than a minute later, a PEREGRINE FALCON swoops up to occupy the same choice lookout.
  
  
• Fledgling red-tailed hawk, hours out of the nest, clumsily flits about the Lyman Laboratory lawn, perching long enough on the handrail to have its photograph taken. Concerned bird lovers call Mass Audubon, who say that awkward flight attempts by fully feathered birds are typical for this time of year. The Oxford Street red-tailed chicks emerge two days after the famous Alewife hawk chicks, so beloved by the Cambridge bird-watching community. Read more about them here.
  
  
• See the NEW GENERATION OF RED-TAILED HARVARD HAWKS hatched in April before they fledged as photographed by Holly Hutchinson here.
  
  
• Holly’s blog describes a fascinating sequence, well-photographed in her blog: Hawk mother preens extensively, then spreads wings and tail feathers on the sunny ledge of copper-flashed Cruft Lab. Again she preens [enjoying her vacation from chick-tending?]. Then she pounces on a small, wind-whipped branch of a maple tree, rising and falling dramatically with the wind as she gets a firm hold of some kind of prey. She flies back to her nest in the white pine and feeds the bird she just caught [visible in one of Holly's photos] to her offspring.
  
  
• ALEWIVES RETURN in dense profusion, swirling arabesques as they spiral past Larz Anderson Bridge and up the Charles. Fingernail-clipping-sized fry [of earlier-breeding herring?] move with rowers’ little wake waves over the shallows, disappearing and re-appearing as they float over white fresh water clam shells. PERCH and SUNFISH peck at an algae-covered rock, oblivious to the salt-water visitors, while a giant three-foot CARP dozes in the sun.
  
  
• White bolls of bread, spaced a meter apart, form an array covering a grass triangle of Winthrop Park [planted by bench-dozing human under sleeping bag?]. Bread attracts a flock of pigeons (females dining, males puffing and strutting) and house sparrows. Two young children run across park, squealing with delight, scaring the birds away to nearby ledges and branches. Birds return one by one as children, sitting still and chattering with restrained whispers to an older man [their grandfather?] on a nearby bench, waiting for maximum bird- startling opportunity. On a private signal, children jump from their bench, waving and shouting, as pigeons take off with a clatter of wing feathers.
  
  
• WHITE PINE tree behind Grays succumbs to insect damage and is chopped down by FMO Landscape Services. Ravages of carpenter ants also lead to death of two crab apple trees between the Fogg and the Carpenter Center. Two big trees on the Broadway side of the Fogg are also harvested for safety. Wood chips of victims feed compost for superb nourishment of living specimens.
  
  
• Flower garden maintained by the Loeb House staff show their most magnificent blossoms earlier this month: tree peonies, fragrant lily-of-the-valley, and tulips.
  
  
• LIGHTNING strikes Newell Boat House, blasting a two-foot hole in the slate shingles and shorting out computers, the oil tank monitoring system and even battery-operated clocks.
  
  

Thanks to Campus Nature Watchers Dan Blair, Wayne Carbone, Kieran Clyne, Joel Day, Holly Hutchison, Sonia Ketchian, Jay McNeil, Stuart McNeil, Jim Sarafin and Joe Shea!

 

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