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:

MassRecycle presents Harvard University with 2012 "Institutional Recycling Award." Receiving the award for Harvard are Rob Gogan, Harvard Campus Recycling & Waste Services; Mary Lou Kearns, Harvard University Dining Services; Brandon Geller, FAS Green Program; Sam Houston, FAS Green Program.

HARVARD WINS "INSTITUTIONAL RECYCLING" AWARD

Harvard University won the "Institutional Recycling" Award from MassRecycle, the Commonwealth's recycling advocacy organization. The organization was particularly impressed with Harvard's inter-departmental programs that reuse and reduce waste, not just recycle it. Partnerships between the Office for Sustainability, Dining Services, the Freshman Dean's Office, and Harvard Recycling enabled Harvard to cut per-plate food scraps from five ounces in 2005 to two ounces last year through peer-to-peer education. Single-use cup distribution declined from 10,000 per month to 200 at Annenberg over the same period, helped by the coordinated hand-out of reusable mugs at the first BrainBreak. At the BrainBreak, students have to sign a pledge to use and carry their mugs around campus, and acknowledge that HUDS will not provide single-use mugs at BrainBreaks. MassRecycle also noted a similar collaboration between Harvard Recycling, Harvard Real Estate, the Dean of Students and the students of Harvard Habitat for Humanity that enables the recovery of over 1,200 tons of reusables at Move-out and has raised over $400,000 for Habitat over the past seven years. To read more about the award, click below:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/newsplus/annenberg-waste-reduction-efforts-recognized-with-recycle-award/

CAN HARVARD BECOME A ZERO WASTE CAMPUS BY 2020?

We hope so! This is our goal, and we hope to make it official University policy soon. AASHE, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, has assembled at their website abundant resources on sustainable management of campus waste and materials.

These resources are intended for campuses that are moving toward zero waste by reducing, reusing, recycling, and composting. These actions mitigate the need to extract virgin materials, such as forest products harvesting and mining and refining metals. It generally takes far less energy and water to make a product with recycled material than with virgin resources. For example, making office paper from recycled paper generates 37% less greenhouse gas than making from wood pulp. Reducing waste generation also reduces the flow of waste to incinerators and landfills, which produce greenhouse gas emissions and can contaminate air and groundwater supplies. Please check these resources to see how your office, building or department can cut waste:
http://www.aashe.org/resources/resources-waste-minimization-and-recycling-campus/.

Also, check these options for waste reduction in our Zero Waste Guide here:
http://www.uos.harvard.edu/fmo/recycling/recycling_guidebook.pdf

Also read about waste reduction programs run by our Office for Sustainability’s Occupant Engagement Group:
http://www.green.harvard.edu/reducing-waste

 

FAS LABS RECYCLE HELIUM

Liquid helium is the coldest commercially available substance, kept at -269 degrees Celsius (-452 degrees F), only a few degrees above absolute zero. It has many uses in Harvard’s laboratories. Unfortunately, the price is rising and availability has been interrupted due to world-wide demand. Consequently several lab building managers are collaborating with Larry Paige of CGR to recover and consolidate gaseous helium that evaporates off the liquid, re-compress it to liquid form, and re-distribute it to the labs. Harvard Recycling is helping this effort by picking up and distributing the tanks to different labs. So add helium to the list of commodities we handle!

 

HARVARD OUT-PLAYS AND OUT-RECYCLES YALE

At this year’s Harvard-Yale game, which Harvard won 34-24, we set up over 400 recycling stations to accommodate the recyclables, compostables and trash from 33,000 tailgating fans. We recovered 12,000 pounds of boxes, cans, bottles and programs for recycling from the event. Even more important than recycling is waste reduction. Working with FAS Athletics Eco-Rep Emma Payne, OFS Managers Brandon Geller and Sam Houston, Athletics Managers Jason Waldron and Jon Lister, Custodial Supervisor Augusto Arevalo, and George Langley of Cambridge Landscape, we have managed to reduce dramatically the trash sent out from the Harvard-Yale game and other November activities. In FY 2005, before we had an Athletics REP, Harvard sent 38.48 tons to the landfill from November’s activities. This year, including over 25 special dinners, banquets and tailgate parties, we sent 17.92 tons to the landfill. Congratulations to Harvard Athletics for all its hard work.

One of the most dramatic recycling statements Harvard undergraduates made at The Game occurred at the Student Tailgates section at Beren Tennis Center. Nearly all cans, bottles, boxes and Crimson-red Solo cups drunk by Harvard students got properly placed in the abundant recycling stations. Meanwhile, in the Visitor’s section, the tennis courts were littered with hundreds of cans, bottles and Yale-blue Solo cups. Campus Services Associate Director for Events Jason Luke corroborated this impression. "The Harvard kids definitely recycled better than the Yale kids." Will Yale see the same kind of recycling-responsible behavior in New Haven next year? We hope so! See photos below for indisputable evidence that the Crimson recycled while Yale littered.

 

GAMEDAY CHALLENGE HARVESTS A TON

For the fourth consecutive year, Harvard participated in the EPA and Keep America Beautiful’s "GameDay Challenge," a contest in which campuses hosting football games recover and record how much they recycle. We chose to run the event at the Harvard-Bucknell game on 10-13-12. With parents of 1,600 here for Parents Weekend, members of the Resource Efficiency Program staffed stations for recyclables, compostables, trash and last but not least, reusable lunch bags! The final tally showed that we recovered 53% for recycling or composting, or 2,440 pounds worth, and saved the equivalent of 2.35 metric tons of CO2 equivalent. Thanks REPs! Brandon Geller’s stalwart crew of volunteer tailgate bag dispensers fanned out and gave every vehicle their own trash and recycling bag to make recycling just as easy as trash disposal. George Langley of Cambridge Landscape says that Brandon’s crew has made clean-up much easier now that guests bag up everything. Thanks Brandon and crew!

 

CASELLA MRF TOURS

Harvard Recycling has hosted two tours of Casella’s MRF this fall. Thanks to Mark Evans, Liza Casella and Mike Crowell of Casella Recycling for hosting these tours! See the photo from our November tour below. For those of you unable to come, or perhaps even if you came, see this fabulous animated video that shows very clearly how the jumble of single-stream recyclables get sorted out into highly marketable, tightly-baled, 98% pure recovered commodities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CFE5tD1CCI

 

A Harvard team representing the College, Extension, Law School and HUIT visited Casella Recycling in Charlestown in November. See them pictured in front of approximately $12,000 worth of baled aluminum cans and another $10,000 of HDPE bottles. Photo by Mark Evans

CAMPUS NATURE WATCH

• WILD TURKEY forages near Mather House on Flagg Street. Photo by Susi Bunanta
  
  
  
  
  
• PEREGRINE FALCON sweeps over Widener, then pauses to soar between the Library and Weld Hall, scanning Boylston Plaza carefully in search of lunch.
  
  
• RED TAILED HAWK swoops down from Holyoke Center roof to hunt unseen prey on Holyoke Street.
  
  
• Lush greenery makes November look like June behind 5 Cowperthwaite Street. Photo by Campus Nature Watcher
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• WILD TURKEY roosts several nights in the old crab apple over the little picnic table in the gully below the Museum of Comparative Zoology courtyard; (the same?) wild turkey visits UHS, taking refuge in a concrete niche on the ramp down to the parking garage underneath Holyoke Center.
  
  
• HERMIT THRUSH lives up to its name by skittering carefully underneath some VIBURNUM bushes bordering a patio at Harvard University Press at 79 Garden St.:. Though well-hidden, the bird nonetheless is unable to avoid detection by a vigilant Campus Nature Watcher.
  
  
• Turkey in the Yard is lucky today’s students don’t hunt campus wildlife. Photo by Justin Ross
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Oyster mushroom grows on stump on Western Avenue opposite Harvard iLab. Photo by Rob Gogan
  
  
  
  
• In the acre between Sever and Emerson, WHITE BREASTED NUTHATCH climbs up and about the big WHITE OAK, then flies to the oak closest to Emerson where unidentifiably fast-moving birds dart. Soon, birds including ROSE-BREASTED NUTHATCHES and other white-breasteds visit the large RED PINE with open cones nearby.
  
  
• Pair of silver HORNETS zoom in perfect synchrony 1,000 feet over the heads of 31,123 attendees of Harvard-Yale game at 400 MPH, roaring a 100-decibel final note to the "Star Spangled Banner."
  
  

Thanks to Campus Nature Watcher Katherine Brick, Paul Dwyer, Brian Farrell, Kanchi Gandhi, Sonia Ketchian, Lori Kuzma, Justin Ross and Jody Steiner!

 

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