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 denim blue jeans, all sizes, which Harvard-affiliate and his family will take there in February. Please contact us if you have any to donate.

SURPLUS AVAILABLE
as of 1-25-11

COLLAPSIBLE TABLES (90), assorted sizes.

Vertex POSTER AND PRINT TRANSPORTERS (7), 3’ x 4’ x 8”, two wheels and handles make transportation through airports easy.

HP LASERJET 4600 and supplies

JIFFY PADDED ENVELOPES: 3-4 boxes, 100/box, Jiffy Padded #2 Envelopes, 8.5" x 12" (but more Kraft-paper colored).

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.

MOUNT TRASHMORE the 13th: Undergrads help sort through, then heap up one day´s Yard trash. Note "Without Recycling" box atop the heap which shows how much higher it would have been without recycling. Brandon Geller, photo

UNDERGRADS RECYCLE MORE: Student REPs from the FAS Resource Efficiency Program (REP) and staff from Harvard Recycling conducted the 13th annual Waste Audit this November. The Audit assesses how well undergraduate residents separate recyclable papers, cardboard, bottles & cans by measuring the weight of these items discarded as trash and not recycled. The team audited a random sample of 34 trash bags generated by Harvard undergraduate residences between Sunday 11-7-10 and Wednesday 11-10-10. Results showed that recyclables or reusables comprised 31% of the sampled trash compared to 44% last year. This is the lowest fraction of recyclables in the trash since the Audits began in 1999. The following Monday, undergrads built "MOUNT TRASHMORE," a 10-foot heap of trash bags representing one day’s trash from Harvard Yard, to raise awareness that lots of what we still throw away can be reused, recycled or composted. Read more about the Audit by Colin Durrant on the OFS Website here:
http://green.harvard.edu/2010-mt-trashmore-and-annual-waste-audit

Not to be out-done by their juniors, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL WASTE AUDIT shows that only 27% of future lawyers´ trash is recyclable or reusable. Those steel cups are working! Read more here:
http://www.green.harvard.edu/hls-green-living-reps-get-down-and-dirty-waste-audit

HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL WASTE AUDITORS find that 34% of HBS trash is recyclable or reusable. In doing the audit, Carol Healy of OFS reports that her Green Living Reps were inspired to run a recycling efficiency contest between the Sections. More news about this by Earth Day!

RECYCLEMANIA KICKS OFF THIS WEEK!

Over 575 colleges and universities have registered for RecycleMania, the campus recycling tournament. For the next 10 weeks, we are going to report our recycling and trash tons collected to the RecycleMania website www.recyclemaniacs.org. Last year, Harvard had the top recycling rate in the Ivy League and recovered the second highest tonnage of recyclables in the nation. So February or March are good months to clean out and recycle your files, sweep those outdated books and periodicals off your bookshelves, and get all those boxes, cans & bottles into the blue recycling barrels. We have some gorgeous posters to promote the event which we would be happy to send you. If you put one up in your building, we will send you a thank-you gift!

This October, Harvard Athletics participated in the EPA’s GameDay Recycling Challenge to promote recycling, sharing leftover food, composting and waste reduction at a home football game. We chose the Lehigh Game, which coincided with the Freshman Parents Weekend on 10-16-10. Results are in! HARVARD FINISHED IN 4TH PLACE out of 75 participants in Waste Diversion and second in Organics Recovery. See the full results here.

 

HARVARD RECYCLING GUIDEBOOK

Download our new HARVARD RECYCLING GUIDEBOOK! Thanks to Mike Conner of UOS for invaluable help with production. Read about our new commitment to Zero Waste, current SingleStream recycling specifications, composting on campus, and a summary of all Campus Recycling & Waste Services here.

 

HARVARD-YALE RECYCLES!

We didn’t just recycle the Lehigh game; we recycled at ALL home football games! At the Harvard-Yale game in November, crowded by tailgate parties and a buffeted by a nasty November breeze, we recovered 25% of The Game’s refuse for recycling. Thanks to George Langley, Jon Lister and Jason Waldron of Harvard Athletics; Brandon Geller and Athletics REP Alyssa Devlin (who drafted her visiting parents to the cause!) of the Office for Sustainability; and Volunteers including Gracie Brown, Molly O’Loughlin, Dewahar Senthoor; and last but not least, Jim Alderton of Resourceful Bag & Tag, who flew all the way from Chicago to help show us how to make the ClearStreams resistant to getting blown down in the 30 knot gusts.

 

LAW SCHOOL PROVIDES STEEL MUGS
FOR ALL STUDENTS

LAW SCHOOL PROVIDES STEEL MUGS FOR ALL STUDENTS to reduce environmental impacts of single-serve cups. If HLS´ers use their mugs 24 times or more, they will have less environmental impact than paper or plastic take-out cups. Read Kate Cosgrove's article here on the Office for Sustainability (OFS) website: http://green.harvard.edu/node/1152
The article cites a recent article in the NY Times that gives a life-cycle analysis of steel bottles vs. single-use plastic bottles here:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/19/opinion/20090419bottle.html

 

SPEAKING OF MUGS...

Send a "mug shot" featuring you drinking out of a mug (or bottle) to sustainability at harvard dot edu. OFS will post the photos in an album online, and the most creative entry will win a prize! Of course, if you must use a single-serve cup, empty PAPER CUPS CAN NOW BE RECYCLED with SingleStream. We can recycle lids too. But lugging a mug is reusing, and that’s always better than recycling.

 

HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL GOES GREEN!

HKS Facilities Management, Kennedy School Climate Action, Sodexho and the HKS Green Team have pitched in to promote composting, expanded recycling and FreeCycle events. In fact, Vidya Sivan of the Green Team is combining the Valentine's Day Cosmetics Drive with a FreeCycleon Thursday, 2-10-11 from 11:30 to 1:30. Five HKS offices have earned Leaf 1 certification from the Office for Sustainability's Green Office program. Recovering food scraps at HKS presents unique pest control challenges due to the proximity of the Charles River and Harvard Square restaurants. Squirrels gnawed through plastic barrels to get at the leftover food, so Herb's Disposal dressed up some rodent-proof galvanized barnyard feeding barrels for the purpose (see photo). Next project: Another Waste Audit! Thanks especially to Green Queen Vidya Sivan; students Annika Brink, Kate Glynn and Graham VanderZanden; Larry Black, Jeff Martin, and Gina Venturini from HKS Facilities Management; and Andrew Cox and Randi Kates-Pierce from Sodexho.

 

UNWANTED PHONE BOOKS

UNWANTED PHONE BOOKS continue to be delivered to our campus. We can recycle them once out of their plastic wrappers. It’s better not to include the advertisement magnets attached to some of the directories, but they won’t spoil the recycling load. Better than recycling is reduction. If you don't wish to receive any phone books next year, please call the Directory Opt Out Phone Number: 1-888-888-8448 or visit:
http://my.supermedia.com/directoryoptout/.

For Yellow Book USA, Inc., please call 1-800 YBYELLOW or visit:
http://recycleyellowbook.com/opt-out-of-phonebook-delivery/

Many of the phone books delivered on campus recently have magnet ads stuck on them. Unwanted magnet ads: Marcia Deihl of Tozzer Library suggests gluing art or reference information onto them and re-using them! See her nifty suggestion for building your own Stata Center elsewhere in this issue. Thanks Marcia!
http://www.ehow.com/how_5461414_recycle-disposable-magnets.html

 

INDIVIDUALLY BREWED COFFEE AND TEA

Individually brewed coffee and tea have become very popular across campus. However, the popular Keurig "K-cups" with plastic/aluminum cover, plastic cup, and polyester mesh inside are neither recyclable nor compostable, unless you are a fanatic with a Swiss army knife (like us), cutting the wet coffee grounds out of the non-compostable screens and taking them home to your backyard composter. Julie DiMilla of UIS’s 1230 Soldiers Field Road, Allston center, recommends another solution: coffee and tea brewed from compostable pods. Julie says the flavor is good, and gardening colleagues are happy to take the used pods home for composting. Try compostable coffee or tea pod services from one of Harvard's Preferred Vendors:
BOSTON BEAN'S WOLFGANG PUCK POD COFFEES AND TEAS:
http://shop.bostonbeancoffee.com/shop/category.aspx?catid=135
ATLANTIC COFFEE:
http://atlanticcoffee.com/pods.htm

 

INTER-OFFICE ENVELOPES

Harvard Divinity School Green Teamer Bronwen Murphy reminds us that Harvard University Mail Services (HUMS) keeps an INVENTORY OF INTER-OFFICE ENVELOPES on hand and can provide them to departments on request. HUMS will also pick up excess inter-office envelopes and will make sure that they are re-used. If you require inter-office envelopes or would like a supply removed please contact HUMS at hums at harvard dot edu, or 496-MAIL (6245). Thanks to Betsy Shortell of HUMS for confirming this service!

 

CORRECTION

CORRECTION: In our last issue, we told you that it was OK to recycle bioplastic cups. This is incorrect. Here is a response from Jerry Powell, Executive Editor of "Resource Recycling" Magazine:

"BIO-PLASTICS ARE NOT RECYCLABLE. If they are certified as compostable, they should go in the composting bins. The only exception is paper cups. A clean paper cup can be recycled; a contaminated one should be composted."

Thanks to Mary Beth Calnan of MassRecycle for pointing this out and getting the word from the guru of North American Recycling.

 

DONATION STATION

Several campus offices conducted drives over the Holiday season to collect goods for donation, which we gladly sent on to charities including the Cambridge Family Shelter and Harvard Habitat for Humanity. Harvard Recycling would be glad to help you continue collecting surplus goods for donation to charity. Please let us know if you'd like us to deliver a new "DONATION STATION" box for collecting surplus office supplies and equipment, abandoned "Lost & Found" clothing, books, non-perishable food, toys (new and used) or any other reusable product. We work with over 200 local and international charities to put the goods in the hands of people who will use them.

 

VALENTINE'S DAY COSMETICS DRIVE

Speaking of collections for the needy, the tenth annual VALENTINE'S DAY COSMETICS DRIVE kicks off on 2-1-11! This tradition started when Jayne Loader, former Co-Master of Quincy House, asked us to take surplus cosmetics to a homeless shelter. Jayne had done this for Valentine’s Day when she lived in Texas. Please let us know if you'd like to be a "Cosmetics Cupid" to help the ladies of the Cambridge Family Shelter at the YWCA get deeply-appreciated nail polish, make-up and toiletries. We have already delivered 65 collection boxes! Can we beat the record of 2009, when we sent 2,000 pounds over for the party? Harvard FMO Recycling is teaming up with the OFS Resource Efficiency Program and the UOS Diversity Council in this effort. We will be collecting Friday morning, 2-11-11. Please also let us know if you have experience and interest in helping conduct the party. Manicurists, cosmeticians and hair stylists especially welcome!

 

BAN ON DISPOSAL OF
CLEAN GYPSUM WALLBOARD

The BAN ON DISPOSAL OF CLEAN GYPSUM WALLBOARD at 310 CMR 19.017 has been published and is effective on July 1, 2011. Gypsum drywall joins 13 other commodities including lead batteries; leaves; tires; white goods (metal appliances); non-leaf yard waste; containers (glass, metal or plastic); single polymer plastics; recyclable paper; cathode ray tubes (TV’s & older computer monitors); asphalt pavement, brick and concrete; metal; and untreated wood. See all waste ban regulations here:
http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/laws/regulati.htm#bans

 

AVOID HORMONE-MIMICKING BPA

Avoid getting hormone-mimicking BPA into your body by shopping where the receipt paper has red fibers on the back! Thanks to Amy Perlmutter for the tip via MassRecycle! "Wisconsin-based Appleton Paper produces more than half of the thermal receipt paper sold in North America. In the first week in November, it began incorporating tiny biodegradable red rayon fibers in its stock. Resembling tiny eyelashes, they’re visible only on the paper’s back, uncoated side."
Read more here

 

WALK/BIKE/SKI/SKATE TO A FREE BREAKFAST!

3rd Annual HSBA FREE HOT Walk/Ride Day Breakfast in Harvard Square - January 28 at Holyoke Center near Au Bon Pain. Thanks to the Harvard Square Business Association for sponsoring this event.
Download .pdf of COLOR FLYER here
Download BLACK AND WHITE here (looks great when printed on green)
Download a 4-TO-A-PAGE FLYER here

 

CAMPUS NATURE WATCH

• Could this be why rodent population near Kennedy School has dropped recently? Photo by Scott McDonald





• RED-TAILED HAWKS perch near Belfer building on "THE" Charles Hotel sign letters. Photo by Scott McDonald




• EASTERN COTTONTAIL RABBIT pauses for a calm and collected moment on the small gravel terrace behind 7 Ware Street.
  
  
• Two FOXES in fluffy red winter coats appear occasionally on the lawn at Harvard Divinity School, probably living in the naturally landscaped berm below the former Cyclotron. NORWAY RAT population becomes scarce in the neighborhood… Business School foxes dine on GRAY SQUIRRELS, leaving the heads behind.
  
  
• COYOTE tracks lead across the snow-covered Charles to a 10-foot open water area next to the Weld Boat House dock, which is the only drinkable water in sight; prints indicate that after its drink, the canid trotted down the frozen river.
  
  
• In the tree by the Lehman Gate facing the Harvard COOP, an adult RED-TAILED HAWK perches with a PIGEON in its talons. Displeased with two chatting onlookers, the raptor flies to a tree between Straus and Matthews before flapping away out of sight.
  
  
• SHARP-SHINNED HAWK flies low past Holyoke plaza, across Massachusetts Avenue and into the Yard and disappears; soon, two BLUEJAYS in the CEDAR OF LEBANON tree at the side of Lehman Hall begin screeching in alarm. Suddenly there is a ruckus in the bare low bushes by Wadsworth (facing Grays Hall) and the raptor chases the sparrows feeding there, flying through the low bushes. After sparrows narrowly escape, the unsuccessful hunter rests in the tall Magnolia by Wadsworth to catch its breath.
  
  
• Handsome red male CARDINAL calls in the crab apple on the earth roof of Pusey Library.
  
  
• Several BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEES try to fend off the cold while feasting on the crab apples on the roof of Pusey, while at least four MOURNING DOVES and a few ROBINS keep them company.
  
  
• Another day in the crab apples on the roof of Pusey Library at least half a dozen pairs of HOUSE FINCHES feed on the fruit, and are often harassed by the numerous STARLINGS.
  
  
• Male cardinal flies from a tree on the Quincy Street side of the Cambridge Fire Station into the Yard. The next day, its female partner forages by Canaday in a nearby red-fruited crab apple tree.
  
  
• Abundant snow unleashes creativity: visiting ART dramatist and his two children busily build an igloo while landscapers prune a tree near Matthews; the next day, a large SNOW POLAR BEAR stands guard near the Arctic-inspired structure…SNOW DOG next to Emerson at the corner with Sever sports a bushy branch of pine for a tail; its ears are small branches of leaves.
  
  
• Join President Faust's Harvard Community Running and Walking Program! The inaugural walk is Tuesday, 2-1-11 at 12 noon at the John Harvard statue. As we stroll, we may notice migrating raptors high overhead, and possibly witch hazel blooming behind Widener.
  
  

Thanks to Campus Nature Watchers Gary Alpert, Sonia Ketchian, Roy Lauridsen, Jean Martin, Scott McDonald and Gina Venturini!

 

"If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production."

Berkeley Ecology Center

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