Tossed aside and lined with plastic, twist-tied and buried beneath heaps of cerebral refuse, waste cognizance lies in the depths of the average college student's consciousness, resting atop Oedipal latencies and the Superego. For Earth Day and as one of the ongoing efforts of student groups like Sustainable Dartmouth and ECO, we have attempted to pull waste awareness out from deep within the subconscious. Earth Day, which began in 1970, is now institutionalized to remind us yearly of the need to care for our environment.
You have probably caught a glimpse or a whiff of the volunteers this week who have been carrying around all the trash they have produced, many of whom enlisted simply to learn more about their own consumption habits and to measure how much waste they generate. Hopefully, by now, through friendly interrogation, the campus at large has unearthed the purpose of this project, a mixture of waste awareness and clever product placement for the spring's Sustainable Move-Out.
Distinguished by swollen dumpsters and heaps of discarded but often still salvageable items, spring Move-Out at Dartmouth serves as a prime example of how the college lifestyle lends itself to unnecessary wastefulness. In an informal survey conducted last term, most students suggested large quantities of leftover appliances, clothes and furniture as just a few of the categories of things that they could potentially donate.
Based on the responses, and both the economic and environmental practicality of preventing valuable goods from going to waste, Sustainable Dartmouth, ECO, The Green Magazine and the administration are well on their way in bringing to life the Sustainable Move-Out for this spring. To lighten both the physical load of the already much belabored custodians and the fiscal load of the Office of Residential Life, Facilities Operation & Management and the administration, there will be drop-off points for donated goods come move-out time and the items will be donated or stored over the summer and resold in the fall. A portion of the profits will go to recoup costs while the majority of revenue will go to a campus charity.
This project has been a long time coming under the auspices of Dartmouth Sustainability Director Jim Merkel and as a result of the huge successes of similar move-outs at other schools like Harvard, the University of Richmond and Bowdoin. Bowdoin raised about $30,000, while Richmond's sale in conjunction with the organization "Dump and Run" made over $19,000 and benefited 21 local charities. Harvard Recycling saw a 54 percent reduction in trash between 2002 and 2004, which was the second year of their move-out initiative. The Harvard Habitat for Humanity "Stuff Sale" has also generated more than $70,000 in revenue.
One difference between move-outs organized at these schools and Dartmouth's endeavor will be that our move-out will be mostly student-run without outside organizations assuming many logistical responsibilities. As a result, the success of the move-out has been dumped at our feet, in a less pejorative sense of the word, in terms of student participation during the actual process along with the number of volunteers needed for spring setup, summer sorting, and fall resale.
So do not forget to let others know about the move-out at the end of this term. The waste-filled trash bag campaign this week and the waste-free move-out are just a couple of events sponsored by student environmental groups on campus. Our campus will be one voice or, rather, one vox clamantis, joining other college campuses across the country in a call for environmental awareness. As excessively buoyant as this sounds, there's so much gloom and doom about environmental policy in the news these days that one day of even hyperbolic joy is welcome.
Make sure to celebrate Earth Day this Saturday, April 22, by checking out the Earth Day screening of "Birdsong and Coffee" and take notice or take up arms in the ongoing movement on campus for a more sustainable college community.
