SURPLUS AUCTION:

30 Pallets of LIGHTING SUPPLIES to be auctioned as one lot on Thursday 4-28-11 at 1 PM sharp. Goods include new & used straight hanging T-8 and recessed 2 x 2 fixtures, recessed spotlights, aluminum sconces & brass chandeliers. Lithonia & other manufacturers. Also, 2 Pallets chilled water diffuser grilles. All goods will be sold as one lot; bidder (or team of bidders) must be prepared to pay for everything and remove it within one week. Sale benefits campus charitable organizations. Viewing at 12 noon; bidding starts at 1 PM. Email us for location.

SURPLUS WANTED:

School in Bhutan needs digital projector for PowerPoint lessons. Please contact us if you have a surplus projector to give to Cambridge volunteer MD to ship there.

Community in Costa Rica’s Cloud Forest needs shoes, denim blue jeans, all sizes, and cookware, which Harvard affiliated family will ship there this fall. Please contact us if you have any to donate.

SURPLUS AVAILABLE
as of 4-25-11

Custom-built LECTERN, never used, available. See photo.

Lidded KIDDIE SANDBOXES or swimming pools, 3’ x 4’ x 8". See photo.

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.

Farmer Peter Britton shows fresh compost delivered from Harvard that morning, with four month old compost in the background. Photo by Angela Alberti

Harvard Recycling Champion of Ivy League

HARVARD *AGAIN* WINS RECYCLEMANIA "GRAND CHAMPION" competition in our conference! For the 10th straight year, Harvard has won Ivy League honors in "RecycleMania," a 10-week campus recycling contest. Harvard was first in the following aspects of the competition: Grand Champion, proportion of refuse recovered for recycling; Gorilla Prize, most total tons recovered for recycling; and, beating out Princeton this year, Per Capita Classic, most basic recyclables recovered per person by weight. Harvard was fourth in Waste Minimization, which tracks least weight of trash generated per capita. UPenn won in this category, generating 25% less trash per capita than we did. Perhaps we could learn something from our sister in PA: Penn bans sale of bottled water on campus and gives no plastic bags to customers at its bookstore. Johns Hopkins University generated less than half as much trash as did Harvard, despite also having a Medical School. In general, med schools, with their wide variety of special waste streams including radioactive, clinical, confidential records and so on have the hardest time cutting waste, so Penn's and JHU's achievements are all the more impressive. So let's buy smarter and waste less. But by all means, let's keep on recycling like the Grand Champions we are!

 

Harvard Recovers Most Used Books in the Nation

We learned about another first-place finish for Harvard's Materials Management efforts. Better World Books, which buys most of the books recovered by Harvard Habitat for Humanity during the spring and summer Move-outs, informed us that HARVARD SOLD MORE BOOKS FOR REUSE THAN ANY OTHER CAMPUS IN THE NATION. As a result, we won the BWB 2010 Book Drive Contest! The prize is an all-expense paid trip to Peru and Chile. The Harvard Habitat for Humanity student most deserving of this prize, in our opinion, was Chelsea Shover '11, who took the most initiative to recover books and ship them for reuse. Chelsea will be traveling to a number of schools with the BWB/WorldFund Literacy Tour. She will be writing and posting a blog about the trip on the BWB website. Harvard FMO Recycling is proud of Chelsea, Timo Kim '10, Dewahar Senthoor '13, Kate Zeghibe '11, and all the other volunteers from the Summer 2010 Stuff Sale Crew who saved at least eight tons of books from getting landfilled and instead, made them available to other students, while raising nearly $30,000 for Habitat for Humanity!

(Chelsea Shover ’11, named Better World Books Prize Winner, wins trip to Peru and Chile this summer. Photo by Ben Brinkopf ’11)

 

Harvard Green Carpet Awards

Harvard honored its waste reducers, reusers, recyclers and other green champions across the campus on 4-11-11. SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS went to PROFESSOR BILL CLARK, Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development at the Harvard Kennedy School, whose acceptance speech admonished us to take care of the campus habitats that nurture indigenous species; and JAY PHILLIPS, Senior Director of Operations for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who oversees a wide range of sustainability responsibilities, and has helped eliminate over-deliveries of telephone directories, reduced FAS paper use, and co-founded the "Resource Efficiency Program," run in partnership with the Office for Sustainability.

Waste-busting TEAM PROJECT AWARDS went to these groups: the Harvard Business School, for the Executive Education Sustainability Program’s GREENHOUSE GAS/ENERGY REDUCTION BEHAVIOR CHANGE AND ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICES PROJECT, which installed a bottled water reduction program–eliminating the use of 45,000 bottles of water and saving $13,000; Harvard Medical School, for the REUSABLE SHARPS AND BIOHAZARD BOXES PROJECT, which eliminated the need for over 11,000 disposable cardboard and plastic boxes; and Harvard Divinity School, for becoming the first school at Harvard to achieve GREEN OFFICE RECOGNITION FOR EVERY DEPARTMENT, partly by offering composting and battery recycling on every floor of every building.

INDIVIDUAL AWARDS went to recycling champions and green giants of these faculties:

Harvard Business School: Eric Hepfer, Aleem Mawani, Robyn Tsukayama, Stephen Coughlin, Lauren Gilbert, Rebecca Westerling, and Edgar Ventura.

Harvard School of Dental Medicine: Jim McBride.

Harvard Graduate School of Design: Erin Kelly, Amy Linne, and Laura Snowdon.

Harvard Divinity School: Tim Severyn and Kristin Gunst

Harvard Graduate School of Education: Maleka Donaldson-Gramling and Meghan Garrity.

School of Engineering & Applied Sciences: Matthew Hayek and Joanne Carson.

Faculty of Arts & Sciences: Gracie Brown, Isabella Wechsler, Jackson Salovaara, Marjorie Lacombe, Kurt Tsuo, Robert Bosso, Brandon Fernald, Andy LaPlume, Isaure Mignotte, Lauren Raece, Ryan Spoering, and Matt Stec.

Harvard Kennedy School: Annika Brink, Sidney Besse, and Fabio Tavare.

Harvard Law School: Jennifer Lee, Hayley Brown, Gene O'Connor, and Anna Robertson.

Harvard Medical School: Nick Abreau, Jennifer Bellows, Claudia Galeas, Vincent Mazzone, and Amy Yelle.

Harvard School of Public Health: Robert Hughes, Hardeep Ranu, and David Havelick.

From Radcliffe Institute: Jessica Viklund.

From Campus Services: John Aiken (who has championed recycling for 20 years in Dining Services), Wayne Carbone (who recovers over 400 tons of our landscape trimmings for composting in FMO Landscape Services’ all-organic program), Mike Conner (designer of Harvard FMO Recycling’s new "Recycling and Zero Waste Guide"), Jenny Harvey (whose "carrots and sticks" approach to getting HRES staffers to use washable serviceware has saved the use of thousands of paper and plastic cups—good luck at VMI—we’ll miss you, Jenny!), Kris Locke (who helped Harvard FMO Recycling pilot the Computer ReStore through the Bridge Program—now run by SemiNew Computers), Dara Olmsted (who started her own school supplies collection recovery program when she was an undergraduate and expanded hundreds of recycling programs as co-designer of the OfS’s Green Office Program), and Bjorn Storz (one of only five people to get a perfect score on the Harvard Recycling Challenge of 2009).

Alumni Affairs and Development: Michael Picone, Henry Kesner and Anne Sargent. See videos and profiles about the winners here:
www.green.harvard.edu/greencarpet

 

Harvard's Earth Week

Harvard celebrated Earth Week with dozens of screenings, workshops, tablings and events. For example, the undergraduate Resource Efficiency Program’s Eco-REPs had a big presence at the Environmental Action Committee’s Earth Day celebration on 4-16-11. BOTTLED WATER vs TAP WATER taste tests produced absolutely random results, proving (again) that bottled water— expensive, plastic-bottle-trash-producing, delivered by traffic-clogging, air-polluting trucks--tastes no better than good old tap water. CLOTHING SWAP TABLE offered visitors a chance to trade sweaters, socks and shirts. The Herring Alliance, Cambridge HEET, Harvest Co-op, Student Astronomers of Harvard-Radcliffe with their sunspot-focused telescope, the School of Engineering and Applied Science with their project to send solar powered lamps to Mali, and others set up tables. The Office of Physical Resources distributed waste-reducing reusable Nalgene bottles to those completing the eco-Scavenger Hunt. B Good gave out burgers; their veggie-burgers were depleted long before their beef ones! Green recycling tattoos popped up on lots of hands and cheeks. Read more about Earth Week at Harvard, including the campus’s only dorm worm bin in Thayer Hall, here in The Crimson.

 

Semi - New Computers

GOOD, CHEAP COMPUTERS for sale! They’re selling like hotcakes but we have plenty more. Surplus Harvard PC's and laptops refurbished by Semi-New Computers, with the help of special needs students from the LABBB Collaborative, are available for sale. "As our inventories have expanded we are now able to offer our desktop computers at three different price/capability levels. A Pentium 4 or Pentium 4 HT system with 512 KB RAM, 40 GB HD and 15" flat screen monitor for $100 -- A Pentium D system with 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HD and 17" monitor for $150--- A Pentium Core 2 Duo or Pentium V-Pro system with 2 GB RAM, 100 GB HD and a 17" monitor. PLUS! Any system can be upgraded to an 18" or 19" monitor of an additional $50. We also have begun to get a small supply of laptops. For information on those or to get any further information about our services, people should contact either Charlie Thompson 617-721-5549 or Marlene Archer 781-883-3265. On the web at www.semi-newcomputers.com" FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY, all desktop PC's are half price to Harvard employees and Allston-Brighton residents! Contact Semi-New for details:
cmt1216@gmail.com or marcher04@yahoo.com.

 

Officially Going Paperless

HMS Faculty Affairs department initiated a paperless process for all Faculty Promotions, Reappointments, and Review Committees by purchasing laptops that are signed out and used in meetings to review materials. This one initiative resulted in a savings of $15-20,000 annually in reduced paper costs, courier charges and copy machine overages.

ALSO PAPERLESS at FAS: Office of Dean Michael Smith of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. All official Dean’s Office documents must be circulated electronically and ONLY electronically. This policy has cut the use of 13 boxes of paper, saving FAS not only the price of the paper, but the eventual cost to move it off campus as recycling or trash. Furthermore, the policy has cut air and water pollution and saved the fiber equivalent of five trees.

 

Updating the Bottle Bill, Helping Taxpayers and Harvard’s Budget

Is TAXPAYER - (or campus) FUNDING BOTTLE & CAN RECYCLING the best solution? For 28 years, the Massachusetts Bottle Bill has placed a deposit on carbonated beverages. During this time, waters, juices, teas and sports drinks have become popular--none of them covered by the BB. In order to get these non-fizzy beverages recycled, taxpayers (and universities) must pay the cost. Now a large coalition of eco-advocates, litter reduction lobbyists and others are again working on updating the BB in Massachusetts, and this time they have wide support in the Statehouse. The current struggle to balance the state budget now has many people wondering: why should taxpayers (or universities) fund recycling or disposal of all those cans and bottles? Learn more about the Updated Bottle Bill (HB890/SB1650) from MassRecycle's Claire Sullivan. Her excellent presentation is viewable here.

 

CAMPUS NATURE WATCH

• Mating Red-tailed Hawks, Oxford St., Sun 3-27-11. Photo by
  [Ellen McBride, Mass Audubon].





• Wild turkey struts around New College Theater courtyard. "The area is totally enclosed by multiple story buildings so there's proof the things really can fly," according to Ray Traietti. Photo by Tom Morgan





• EASTERN COTTONTAIL RABBIT nibbles the sprouting grass near the SE corner of the Science Center one evening, where Farmers Market tents will pop up next month.



• RED-TAILED HAWK MATED PAIR BUILDS NEST atop Maxwell Dworkin, to the delight of members of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences community. Webcam displayed live photos of the pair brooding over a healthy clutch of three eggs. See Boston Globe photos here. Inexplicably, in early April, the hawks abandoned their nest and three eggs, exposing the eggs to a killing frost.
  
  
• Hawk-watchers of Harvard and beyond offered a likely explanation for the nest abandonment. The Animal Rescue League picked up a red-tailed hawk with a broken scapula and extensive bruises at Prescott Street. It was taken to the Wildlife Clinic at the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in Grafton. The clinic reported that the hawk was a female with a brood patch (meaning she was sitting on eggs). Her prospects of flying again are uncertain. Speculation as to the cause of her injuries includes being struck by a car or her having flown into one of several cranes erected high above the Fogg Art Museum renovation site on Prescott Street. Thanks to Susan Moses who called to get the report from Tufts.
  
  
• Happier hawk-breeding news from the Yard: in the tallest WHITE PINE along the south side of Loeb House, two red-tailed hawks build a nest. One rests on the corner of Houghton Library’s roof with a big branch in its beak, then flies up to drop it off atop the pine. Then it flies away and returns with more nesting material. This time, both male and female fly off to find more nesting material. Hawk-lovers wonder if the male is the same that lost its mate in early April.
  
  
• SEVEN RED-TAILED HAWKS soar in a group above Belfer Center towards Harvard Square, spiraling northwards.
  
  
• Red-tailed hawk glides to the top of 10 Akron Street Garage to dine on fresh quarry.
  
  
• WILD TURKEY walks on pavement next to 20 DeWolfe Street [perhaps the same one pictured in the New Theater Courtyard?].
  
  
• Pair of MOURNING DOVES forages in the walkway to Sever on the Quincy Street side.
  
  
• BLUE JAY calls from high in a tree inside Dunster Garden.
  
  
• Male HOUSE FINCH sings beside his mate perched high up in the tall budding tree next to the Cedar of the Lebanon on the side of Lehman Hall.
  
  
• Two male ROBINS spar, flying up to peck at each other's bills on the lawn by Loeb House.
  
  
• Two WHITE-BREASTED NUTHATCHES fly from tree to tree at the corner of Sever and Emerson. One holds something small and round in its beak and pounds it against the tree bark; the second bird flies down to the ground to forage for fallen tidbits.
  
  
• The tall MAGNOLIA in front of the Inn at Harvard (and at Matthews, Grays, and many other places on campus) flash pristine white glory.
  
  
• Lone DAFFODIL blooms intensely yellow amidst the blue SCILLAS at the side of Boylston Hall.
  
  
• Yellow blossoms of CORNELLIAN CHERRY adorn twin bushes at either corner side of Lehman Hall, and behind Grays Hall.
  
  
• Pink VIBURNUM graces the Grays side of Wadsworth House.
  
  
• Lamont side of Loeb House has a pale NARCISSUS, the front has a lilac-colored AZALEA and a coral flowered bush side by side.
  
  
• In front of Loeb House a large magnificent pink CHERRY fully blooms, flanked by two small magnolias.
  
  
• The walkway to Loeb House adds red TULIPS to its scilla and daffodil bloomers.
  
  
• Miniature dark-blue IRIS blooms at the Faculty Club.
  
  
• Yellow-blossomed bushes adorn each corner of Lehman Hall and Grays Hall.
  
  
• Landscape Services plants new trees in the Yard: YELLOW-WOOD between Memorial Church and Widener; GINKO beside Sever; GOLDEN RAIN TREE by Thayer facing Memorial Church; TUPELO in the Old Yard near Weld; JAPANESE PAGODA TREE replacing a pine behind Grays Hall; AMERICAN BEECH in place of tall evergreen bushes next to Wigglesworth.
  
  
• Second annual HARVARD BIO-BLITZ is on for Sunday, May 1st! Led by Adam Clark ’11 and sponsored by the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, members and friends of the Harvard community will net, spot, photograph and identify all species seen on campus grounds. Blitzers will congregate for a morning inventory of birds and pollinators at the Arnold Arboretum and an afternoon wade in the Charles. Nets, field glasses, identification books provided (but please feel free to bring your own if you’d like). If you are interested in helping, please fill out this Google form.
  
  

Thanks to Campus Nature Watchers Don Claflin, Colin Durrant, Steve Gluck, Eliza Grinnell, Erin Hoffman, Sarah Hopkinson, Holly Hutchison, Sonia Ketchian, Phil Kenneally, Lesley Lam, Susan Moses, Sam Provost, Paul Roberts, Kevin Sheehan, Susan Tuers!

 

"The good Earth--we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy."

Kurt Vonnegut, "A Man Without a Country," 2005

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