SURPLUS AVAILABLE

Please contact us if you want to pick up either of these lots of paper. Preference to recipient who can pick up all paper at once:

1. Universal computer paper unv-15708; 9 ½ x 11 (242 X 280 mm); 2600 sheets per carton; blank, L&R Perf, 30% recycled paper, 18 lb.; 27 boxes.

2. Universal computer paper unv-15801; 9 ½ x 11 (241 x 279 mm); converts to 8 ½ x 11 (216 x 279 mm ); 2700 sheets per carton; clean edge white 18 lb.; 16 boxes.

OFFICE MAILBOXES

FOLDING & STACKABLE CHAIRS
Asking price $10 each; volume discounts.

SURPLUS WANTED

ARTISTS EASELS for the Essex Art Center. Dick Purinton, Harvard Class of 1952, supports this 17 year-old program offering courses in painting, ceramics, metalsmithing, drawing and more to children and adults of the Merrimack Valley. If you have one or more wooden easels, please let us know, as they need 15.

SURPLUS DISTRIBUTION

SURPLUS FURNITURE and other items are available at our Recycling and Surplus Center in Allston every Thursday except Thanksgiving Day 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 PARTIAL SAMPLING of goods available for distribution includes chairs, desks, tables and office supplies.

From Harvard to Haiti: Workers for Ecole Polyvalent of the Port au Prince Archdiocese unload container of donations from Harvard in Haiti this fall. Note "PBHA Leader" Harvard T-shirt.
Photo by Phillippe Ligondel

Harvard Green Carpet Awards

The Third Annual Green Carpet Awards celebrate Harvard’s Eco-Heroes with music, dance performances and drink. Harvard alum Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute, will be the distinguished guest speaker. The venue is Sanders Theater, Memorial Hall, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge on Thursday, April 12 from 3:30-5:30 PM. Help us toast the winners at the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub downstairs afterwards. A little green bird told us that Harvard Recycling would be prominently featured in the Special Achievement Awards. Help us mark our progress in sustainable materials management! See photos below. Read more here:
http://green.harvard.edu/prof-abernathy-rob-gogan-receive-special-achievement-awards

The Harvard Office for Sustainability is proud to announce the winners of the 2012 Spengler-Vautin Special Achievement Award to be presented at this year’s Green Carpet Awards on April 12 from 3:30-5:30 pm in Sanders Theatre. Frederick H. Abernathy, the Gordon McKay Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Abbot and James Lawrence Research Professor of Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Rob Gogan, Associate Manager of Recycling and Waste at Campus Services, will receive the award for their tremendous leadership and commitment to sustainability at Harvard.

Harvard Green Campus Awards:
Sanders Theater at Memorial Hall
45 Quincy Street, Cambridge

Thursday, April 12, 2012
3:30—5:30 PM
Reception to follow, at Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub, downstairs from Theater.

 

Record low trash

Harvard generated LEAST MARCH TRASH since we started keeping records in 1989. Thanks for reducing, reusing and recycling! Light precipitation also helped keep those bags dry, which also cut weight.

 

HLS Composts!

Harvard Law School recovers MOST COMPOST EVER in the month of March 2012. The elaborate set-up for recovering food scraps at the new Wasserstein Caspersen Clinical Center, as well as paper towels from dormitory and office rest rooms, yielded almost 10 tons of clean organic refuse which was picked up by our collection vendor, Save That Stuff, and composted at Brickends Farm in Hamilton. Special thanks go to the entire WCC team, especially Mark Nystrom, John Holleran, John Arciprete, Gene O’Connor, Russell Keyes, Becky Andreasson, Matt McConnell and Tony Castro; as well as Evan Eppler and staff at Restaurant Associates. Last but not least, Kate Cosgrove of the Office for Sustainability has done the best job on campus creating, publishing and posting clear, concise and attractive guidelines for the recycling, composting and trash stations in every classroom, office and lounge in the stunning and well-used facility. As Bridget Sweet of Environmental Health and Safety said, "HLS’s recycling signs are clear enough for my pre-school aged kids to understand."

 

Law School "Furniture FreeCycle"

Also related to the opening of the WCC, the Law School ran a "Furniture FreeCycle" for members of the HLS community at Harvard Recycling in Allston. Since most of the HLS faculty and staff got new furniture for their new offices, there were nearly 1,000 pieces of surplus furniture, supplies and equipment. The Law School chose to distribute these goods with preference to members of the HLS community. Over 50 people, plus five U-Haul trucks and two dozen vans, pickup trucks and station wagons came on two days to take their fill. After the event, there was enough left over to send 200 stacking chairs to the Lawrence Historical Society (thanks to Dick Purinton, Harvard class of 1951, for linking us up); student desks to the City Sprouts school gardening program; desks and file cabinets to the Boston Area Youth Organizing Project; chairs, file cabinets and tables for Sports Legacy Foundation; 20 chairs to Our Lady’s Church; and another 100 chairs to the Honduras Reconstruction Project. See details about the FreeCycle here:
http://green.harvard.edu/re-using-furniture-harvard-law-school

 

HGSE converts Gutman 1st floor to Café

In order to better serve hungry students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Gutman Library’s ground floor was reconfigured into a spectacular new café. In reconfiguring the facility, the Ed School donated six truckloads of furniture to Harvard Recycling. Thanks to Mike Goodwin, Jeffrey Moura, Linda Kucynski, and Jason Carlson for sending down all that butcher block counter ware, storage cabinets, library shelving and café tables and chairs. The Household Goods Recycling Ministry of Acton MA picked up a truckload of these goods to help furnish apartments for needy families. Other charities benefitting included Leominster Public Schools and Gloucester Community Arts Charter School.

 

Harvard Celebrates Earth Month

FOOD WEEK, the first week of April, undergraduate students from the Resource Efficiency Program encouraged their peers to join the "Clean Plate Club" on their way in to dine at the Freshman Union. If they agreed, diners pledged to take only the food they would actually eat and waste no edible food. REPs gave pledgers little 1" green stickers to wear and proclaim their food right-sizing commitment. Mid-April, REPs will promote ENERGY AND WATER conservation, with on-line quizzes promoting personal actions and "Decorate your Reusable Bottle" study breaks. Tuesday the 17th, Harvard Alumni Affairs & Development will run an Earth Day on the 6th floor of 124 Mt Auburn Street that will include sessions on "Backyard Composting 101," Green Recipe Sample and Swap, and a FreeCycle for books and magazines. On April 19th, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science will run a super FreeCycle at Maxwell Dworkin from 11-2. The evening of the 19th, Harvard Green’15 will show "Food Inc" at Fong Auditorium in Boylston Hall. The Environmental Action Committee will feature a Brazilian-themed Earth Day on April 21st in honor of the UN’s "Rio + 20" Conference on Sustainable Development, with two Brazilian bands, at which attendees will do a scavenger hunt among many student and community environmental groups. The Peabody Museum will sponsor and Harvard Recycling will conduct a workshop for children ages 8 and up (with adult attendant) "Earth Day Harvard Recycling Fun" where we will test batteries, make paper, pack reusable goods and meet the invertebrates in a compost pile. See event details here: http://www.peabody.harvard.edu/node/544/#trash The week after Earth Day, FreeCycles at Mather and other Houses will give students a way to swap, sell or share unwanted goods prior to Move-out. Finally, Harvard Recycling will host a tour of Casella on Friday, 4-27-12.

 

Casella Tour Friday 4-27-12

Casella Recycling in Charlestown receives nearly 200 tons of recycled Harvard boxes, bottles, cans and papers each month. Friday, April 27, Harvard Recycling will host a tour for the first 20 Harvard affiliates to request a seat on the bus. We will leave from Harvard Yard at 10:15 and return there by 1 PM. This is a fabulous tour! You will gain a profound understanding of how the jumble of goods turns into clean, well-sorted recyclables to supply the mills of Massachusetts, Canada and beyond. Please let us know if you are interested. We will reserve seats in order of email requests.

 

CAMPUS NATURE WATCH

• VISITING TURKEY stands at foot of steps to Harvard FAS Faculty Room stairway at University Hall. Photo by Shannon Ingraham.





• Turkey tamely struts through the Yard while pedestrians tote umbrellas and improvised raingear. Photo by Ann Weissman.





• Turkey passes Widener Gate. Photo by Andy LaPlume.






• Turkey at Kennedy School Bus Stop. Photo by Scott McDonald.






• Lone WILD TURKEY trots through several corners of University’s Cambridge campuses, including Harvard Yard, where the unusual bird nearly startles a jay-biking student off her bicycle, climaxing in frenzied rescue on JFK Street by Susan Tuers, HKS staffer. During the height of rush-hour traffic, she finds the bird lying on the pavement in the middle of the road, overwhelmed by the whizzing cars, busses and trucks. Dodging vehicles, Susan stirs the terrified turkey and herds it into the greenery next to Hicks Hall of Kirkland House, where it squawks in lonely confusion. As Susan put it, "Finally chasing my dog around things-- and trying to catch him when he thinks I’m just playing with him has paid off!"
  
  
• Three Mourning Doves coo among the crab apples on the roof of Pusey and a male and female Cardinal joins them with the roses and lavender in beautiful bloom.
  
  
• The cherry tree behind CGIS-South is in full Deep pink glory with a bumble bee in attendance and at least a dozen wasps feeding in the blossoms.
  
  
• Winter-Spring drought produces an unexpected sighting in the Charles: Clear, silt- and algae-free early spring waters of Charles River reveal 30-year-old MG convertible perforated with hundreds of rust holes next to Newell Boat House. Harvard Police defer investigation to Massachusetts State Police, who send 15 patrol cars, boat, helicopter, and scuba divers to investigate. When no body or evidence of foul play is found, somewhat crestfallen police depart, leaving Harvard Athletics to deal with hulk.
  
  

Thanks to Campus Nature Watchers Annie Baldwin, Lydia Carmosino, Jane Collins, Michael Colliver, Erin Hoffman, Sonia Ketchian, Scott McDonald, Joe Shea, Susan Tuer, Ann Weissman!

 

Jesus told his disciples, "Now gather the leftovers, so that nothing is wasted."

The Bible, John 6:12

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