SURPLUS WANTED:

small paper shredder (the type that is roughly 2' tall, roughly 5 gal. basket. Please contact us if you have one to donate and we will put you in touch with the requestor.

AVAILABLE elsewhere at Harvard:

Some toner that we are unable to use. It is in sealed boxes and works for any HP 1500 or 2500 color printer. We also have three boxes of toner for that printer (the OfficeMax off brand) that works for any HP Color LJ1500/2500/2550/2800/2820/2840 Smart Printer. Please email us if interested.

AVAILABLE elsewhere at Harvard:

KIP 3400 Blueprint Printer.
Please email us if interested.

 

NO SURPLUS DISTRIBUTION VETERAN’S DAY THURSDAY, 11-11-10 or THANKSGIVING THURSDAY, 11-25-10.

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.

Thanks to Peter Siebert of the Harvard Planning Office for setting up this map. The Surplus Center is just to the west of 141 N Harvard St on the map.

SURPLUS AVAILABLE for Thursday, 4 November, 2010:

• DOCUMENT BOXES "Banker" style in collapsed cardboard (50).
  
• SWIVEL CHAIRS; red, blue and green color.
• BULLETIN BOARDS (10), 2’ x 3’ and larger.
• RADIUS document boxes with two wheels (7 units), ideal for transporting posters or other flat documents, 3’ x 4’ x 8".
• IBM SELECTRIC TYPEWRITER with several different font balls.

GameDay Challenge Volunteers helped scoop nearly three tons of recyclables during the Harvard-Lehigh football festivities on 10-16-10. Resource Efficiency Program Coordinator Brandon Geller, Jakob Lindaas, Dewahar Senthoor & Athletics REP Alyssa Devlin.

HARVARD ATHLETICS RISES TO "GAMEDAY CHALLENGE". The US EPA invited campus athletics programs across the nation to take the "GameDay Challenge". This is a competition to recycle and compost as much as possible from a home football game during the month of October. Harvard was one of ten schools to pilot the contest last year. In the first official year of the competition, over 80 schools including Yale University signed up. Our efforts at recycling at last year’s Princeton game recovered .23 pounds of recyclables or compostables per capita from tailgate parties, catered functions, concessionnaire’s carts under the Stadium, and in the stands. This year, we doubled our per capita recycling rate to .46 pounds. Even better, our trash rate fell from .39 pounds per capita to .28. The overall recycling rate rose to 62%. We will learn later this Fall how we fared in comparison to the other schools, from New Haven and beyond. Unserved meals from the Freshman Parents’ Luncheon were donated to the New England Center for Homeless Veterans. Since gearing up for the pilot GameDay last year, we have taken measures to recycle not only from all football games, but from all events using Harvard Stadium, like the Boston Breakers soccer games and Boston Cannons lacrosse matches. Thanks for these GameDay recycling achievements go to Harvard Athletics stars Jon Lister and Tim Wheaton; Cambridge Landscape’s George Langley; Office for Sustainability Volunteers Alyssa Devlin, Jakob Lindaas, and Dewahar Senthoor; College Life and Student Services Manager Doug Walo; Crimson Catering’s Ryan Gosser, Madeline Meehan, Katie O’Connell and Camilla Ossa; Custodial Services’ Augusto Arevalo and Jason Luke; and last but not least, Brandon Geller of the Office for Sustainability, who pulled together the diverse groups involved to enable us to achieve this fine showing. Read more at the Office for Sustainability website.

 

CASELLA RECYCLING TOURS AVAILABLE

This Friday 11-5-10 at 3:15 PM, a bus is leaving Harvard Yard’s Boylston Gate to go for a tour of Casella Recycling in Charlestown. Seats on the bus are free to any Harvard student, staff or faculty member, but you must register in advance with us. We will also be conducting a tour on Thursday, Veteran’s Day, 11-11-10, leaving Boylston Gate at 8:45. Please email us if you are interested in either of these tours. Seats will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.

 

READERS' QUESTION #1:
To COMPOST OR RECYCLE?

"The cafeteria here has compostable plastic and we are arguing about whether clean plastic should go in the compost bin or recycle bin." --Beth Weiner, Northwest Labs

Good question Beth! Do whatever's easier for you. If your (non-foam) bio-plastic or paper cups, bio-plastic lined paper plates, bio-plastic lined bowls and bio-plastic boxes are pristine, recycle them. This is cheaper for the University. If they have visible food or beverage residue, compost them where feasible. These items should all be certified as "Compostable" by the Biodegradable Products Institute. You'll have to discard non-compostable plastics like foam cups, petro-plastic bags, and petro-plastic utensils as trash.

Composting is an effective way to reduce cafeteria waste, which has more food residue than any other commodity. We should try not to waste food, but we should compost table scraps rather than landfill them. Burying food and other organics creates methane, a greenhouse gas 20 to 70 times more potent than CO2. Composting builds fertility, water retention, and friability of agricultural and horticultural soils. So when you're done, toss your dirty compostable serviceware along with food residuals and napkins into the "Compost" receptacle.

Sports venues like Safeco Field in Seattle and the University of Colorado's Folsom Stadium have adopted a simple and robust model for recycling vs composting which might indicate where we are headed:
Recycling: Bottles and cans.
Compost: Everything else sold in the venue.
With these clear and simple specifications, Mariners and Buffalo home games have achieved recycling + composting rates over 90%.

The bottom line is, both recycling and composting are much better than landfilling!

 

READERS' QUESTION #2:
BATTERIES, LAMPS ETC?

"Where does the electronic waste go? For instance; is a CFL bulb remanufactured? How about batteries, cords, etc.? Is it all recycled/reused and if not what happens to those items not reused/recycled?" --Divinity School Green Team (Alicia Belair, Elizabeth Busky, Jane Chapman, Ralph DeFlorio, Kristin Gunst, Cathleen Hoelscher, Jennifer Hollis, Roy Lauridsen, Jyoti Rana, Leslie MacPherson Artinian, Lindsay Seal, Kama Lord, Bronwen Murphy, Judy Scicchitano, Carol Tierney, and Timothy Severyn)

1. Harvard FMO Recycling sends MERCURY-CONTAINING LAMPS (CFL’s and tube lamps) directly to Complete Recycling Solutions in Fall River, MA for recycling. They dismantle some of the lamps manually in a work booth with negative air pressure; the long tube lamps get ground up in a shredder with negative air pressure which distills all the phosphor powder, aluminum end caps, and glass in an electric oven which condenses out all the mercury. The phosphor is reused by the lamp manufacturing industry; the cardboard boxes in which the old lamps come, the aluminum end caps and the shredded glass are all recycled. The mercury is sold for other industrial purposes. CRS gives plant tours. Please let us know if you'd like us to arrange this. Cost to Harvard for recovering the mercury and recycling lamp components, in addition to pickup and consolidation, label printing, ordering new boxes, re-boxing poorly packed lamps etc., is around eight cents per linear foot. So a box of 30 four-foot T-12 lamps costs us around $10. The Institution Recycling Network oversees our contract with CRS. Recycling CFL’s, U-tubes, and circ-lights costs around fifty cents each.

2. BATTERIES are divided into two types: rechargeable and single-use. We pay students from the LABBB collaborative (special needs students of high school age) to sort our batteries. Here is the sub-sort and disposition of batteries:
a. All rechargeables go to Call 2 Recycle, Inc. This is an organization started by the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation, a consortium of companies that make them, to make it easier for the batteries to get recovered for recycling. Rechargeables power a growing list of consumer products, including batteries from laptops, phones, iPods, iPads and cordless appliances (drills, flashlights, dust-busters etc). The boxes, which come with bags, are provided by C2R. They also pay shipping and replenishment of full boxes. There is no cost to us for any of these services. They recycle these at INMETCO in Pennsylvania . Most of the nickel from the ni-cads (e.g. big drill batteries and many phone batteries) becomes an ingredient of stainless steel.
b. Lithium batteries (usually in cameras, flat button batteries in bike flashers, watches etc) are bagged and shipped out for disposal at a U.S. hazardous waste vendor overseen by the Institution Recycling Network. Cost is around $8 per pound.
c. Lead acid and sealed lead gel batteries are donated to scrap metal dealers at our Surplus Distribution days. They recycle these for a small profit.
d. Alkaline batteries go into a big steel barrel (they are by far the majority by number and volume) for disposal by a hazardous waste vendor coordinated by the IRN. Charge is around $.80 per pound. Battery sorting is well worth-while as the cost to us would be $15/lb for unsorted batteries. Even though no federal or MA law requires this, we choose to do it anyway because they contain toxins like manganese and zinc. Both the European Union and the state of California also require recycling of alkaline batteries to help prevent release of toxins into the environment.

3. Other SMALL ELECTRONICS are divided into these streams:
a. Cell phones, PDA’s, cameras, chargers & accessories, which go to Corporate Renew for a small rebate. They repair and re-sell what they can; they recycle what they cannot. The LABBB kids sort these out.
b. Inkjets go to a remanufacturer, also sorted by LABBB kids and redeemed for a small rebate.
c. Cords, clips, ear buds, head phones, and all other accessories go to Computer Recycling (see below).

4. COMPUTERS and large electronics are processed in this sequence.
a. All CRT monitors go to the IRN to be recycled by Allied Computer Brokers in Amesbury, MA. They are ground up and some of the leaded glass goes to a facility that still manufactures products using leaded glass run by Corning in Malaysia. The remainder goes to a hazardous waste site in the US. The other components of CRT monitors (as well as all computer products) are equal parts of plastic, ferrous metal, or non-ferrous metal. Nearly all of these materials are recycled in the US and some go overseas, but never as part of intact products.
b. Any new-looking desktop computers (and the very few laptops we get) are checked out in Allston by SEMI-NEW COMPUTERS , which also works with LABBB to sort, process, test and refurbish them for sale. They sell complete CPU with Pentium 4 or newer memory chips, 17" flatscreen monitor, keyboard & mouse, and Windows Office XP for $100; more robust machines with 19" monitors are $150. In September, they sold over 100 PC’s to non-profit groups in Lowell, Cambridge, Liberia and Haiti through local immigrant contacts. If you know of any non-profits looking for inexpensive PC’s, please contact Semi-New Computers. If your Harvard department has surplus desktop computers five years old or less, please consider donating them to this program.
c. Rejects from Semi-New go to our Thursday Surplus Distribution. Visitors take away nearly all remaining CPU’s, printers, keyboards, cables, cords, and anything else containing metal.
d. Computer product rejects from Surplus go to ACB via the IRN.

5. E-media goods, including CD’s, DVD’s, audio tapes, video tapes, jewel boxes etc. also go out to Thursday surplus. What isn’t taken there goes to ACB via the IRN. The cost is also $.20 per pound. Please note that you need to erase or destroy all e-media that may contain confidential information.

E-waste recycling costs the University $.20 per pound. Last year we sent out just under 50 tons of e-waste to the IRN for recycling, mostly CRT monitors, scraps, parts and e-media. We estimate that we repaired and re-sold or donated about 75 tons. Because of the annual cost to the University of $40,000 per year, we are not authorized to receive any goods from staffers' homes or anywhere else outside the University. Cell phones, PDA’s, cameras, inkjets and other handhelds do generate a small bit of revenue. If you want to do a drive to encourage your colleagues to bring in these goods from home, we would be happy to support this. Perhaps you’d like to make arrangements with one of the many vendors who will do this (e.g. Corporate Renew in New Haven, The Wireless Alliance in Boulder, or Cartridges for Kids) on your own. We don’t mind, as long as you recycle all other e-waste!

 

AMERICA RECYCLES DAY

Harvard will once again take part in America Recycles Day, the nation's recycling and waste reduction festival, on Monday, 15 November 2010. Join Harvard Recycling, the Office for Sustainability, and the undergraduate Resource Efficiency Program REPs. We will erect Mount Trashmore, one day's trash from Harvard Yard, on the Science Center lawn between 9 AM and 2 PM. We will share results from the 2010 Waste Audit, where we analyze how much of Harvard's trash could have been recycled. If the ARD fairy is good to us, we will have prizes to give away!

 

NO MORE WATER BOTTLES IN SEATTLE!

Seattle University became the first college or university in the state of Washington to go bottled-water free. The university has removed bottled water from vending machines, concession stands, the campus bookstore, on-campus restaurants and catering. The move was spurred by students concerned about the social and environmental impacts of bottled water. Seattle University students spent the last three years working in partnership with university administrators to eliminate bottled water campuswide.

 

HARVARD DONATES TRUCKLOAD OF SURPLUS

Last week, Harvard donated hundreds of chairs, blankets, linens, tables, lamps, and other goods to the Household Goods Recycling Ministry of Acton, all much needed as the weather gets colder. Thanks to Harvard donors Rick MacNeill of Harvard Business School, Roy Lauridsen of Harvard Divinity School, Vince Pafuma and FAS Undergraduate Residence Building Managers, and Rebecca Andreasson of Harvard Law School for the generous donations which made this possible. If you know of any other needy organizations, please ask them to send us a list of their needs and we may be able to give surplus Harvard goods to them.

 

CAMPUS NATURE WATCH

• COYOTE walks up the ramp onto North Harvard Street from Soldiers Field Road just before first light of dawn.
  
  
• FOX takes an afternoon doze in the Softball Field dugout; when humans approach, s/he ambles over to the warning track in the outfield to stretch out on the sun-warmed gravel. When landscaper walks into field, the fox saunters into the bushes. The next day, fox is seen sleeping in the pipe at the core of the big rolled-up tarp while Varsity Softball team pitchers warm up in the adjacent bullpen. When witness reports sighting fox, Coach asks landscape workers to rouse and evict fox. Clapping and marching, pair of landscapers startles fox, who trots away, peering back at chasers. When chasers stop, fox stops; when they resume walking, fox walks to favored sunny warning track, lies down and watches landscapers. When chasers step forward again, fox gives up occupancy of Softball Field and crawls through hedge and fence into O'Donnell Field, where it stays for the remainder of the afternoon.
  
  
• Eviscerated corpses of EASTERN COTTONTAIL RABBITS, as many as four per night, show up in Athletic fields, perhaps victims of predators described above.
  
  
• HARBOR SEAL slips through the Charles River Locks near Harvard Sailing Center and spends a week in the lower Charles basin before wisely returning back through the locks into Boston Harbor on the first day of the Head of the Charles Regatta. Perhaps it didn't like all the extra traffic! Watch videos by New England Aquarium and Matt Lindblad, MIT Sailing Coach:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8KWWDwew-I http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/10/22/harbor_seal_slips_into_river/
  
  
• ALLIGATOR, four feet long, no doubt an abandoned pet that had outgrown its owner's fishtank, is captured in the Charles River in Dedham: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/09/alligator_captu.html?p1=News_links
  
  
• RED-TAILED HAWK captures GREY SQUIRREL in the Memorial Hall horseshoe drive and flies north, its broad wings providing ample lift to accommodate the prey. ... [another] red-tailed leaves perch on the top of Harvard Stadium flagpole to capture and dine on a young rabbit... Near North Hall, low-flying hawk glides with wriggling rat in its talons, gliding towards the middle of a yellow woodframe house on the west side of Mass. Ave. Just in time, the hawk veers upward, releasing the rat to crash into the clapboards high over the sidewalk. Clearing the house, the hawk then swoops down to pick up the now-still rodent...On a sunny October day a Red-tailed Hawk lazily flies from Prescott St over the Faculty Club's Rose Garden ....young hawk stands proudly over the squirrel it killed in Radcliffe Yard in this Harvard Crimson photo: http://www.thecrimson.com/gallery/2010/10/20/photographs-october-20-edition/
  
  
• Murder of 12 CROWS torments a GREAT HORNED OWL in the pines at the Academy of Arts and Sciences behind 5 Bryant Street on the Friday before Halloween weekend.
  
  
• ROBINS feed on the ground and on the deep red fruits of the crab apple trees on Pusey's green roof, along with STARLINGS, HOUSE SPARROWS, a MOURNING DOVE and a male HOUSEFINCH.
  
  
• Leaves of SOURWOOD trees on the Mass Ave side of Wigglesworth flame with spectacular shades of crimson, orange, gold and purple.
  
  
• Facing the Business School at the beginning of the right side of the Larz Anderson Bridge, nearly a dozen WINTERBERRY TREES show off their captivating clusters of red berries, ready to feed passing flocks.
  
  
• In an ELM between Widener and Weld, a WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCH keeps calling and foraging from branch to branch.
  
  
• A juvenile JUNCO feeds on the grassy roof of Pusey and two big fat Dragonflies circle overhead.
  
  
• On the Quincy side of Emerson Hall, a CHICKADEE calls out its name.
  
  
• GRACKLE by the entrance to Wadsworth House gladly accepts bread intended for the sparrows.
  
  
• The Faculty Club's Rose Garden has bees busily feeding in the various flowers and a medium-sized butterfly with orange base and black and white spots on outer wings.
  
  
• PRAYING MANTIS delights Leverett House students. See photo from the Crimson: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/10/22/leverett-praying-sunday-upon/LIQUID AMBER Trees on the Mass Ave side of Wigglesworth display spectacular greenish-golden hanging pods and maroon-rust leaves.
  
  
• On the side entrance to Loeb House, roses show beautiful blossoms of deep crimson, pink, and apricot-pink.
  
  
• On the sunny Friday before the Columbus Day weekend, students in the Old Yard string a flat web belt between two young trees and take turns trying to walk across it without falling off. Spectators enjoy watching their attempts without fearing for their safety.
  
  

THANKS TO CAMPUS NATURE WATCHERS Phyllis Glass, Buzzy Hayden, Sonia Ketchian, George Langley, Bob Stymeist, Tim Wheaton, & George Yeomelakis!

 

"Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual bear on them; for there is no power to see in the eye itself, any more than in any other jelly. We do not realize how far or widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of Nature are for this reason concealed from us all their lives."

Henry David Thoreau, "Autumnal Tints"

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