This fall, the student-led coalition Sustainable Dartmouth will continue its campaign to reduce the amount of waste generated by the College with Sustainable Move-In. The event will offer incoming students low-cost sales on three tractor-trailer truckloads full of used furniture, appliances and other items that were gathered from students at the end of Spring term during their Sustainable Move-Out.
The first sale for incoming freshmen will be hosted in Tindle Lounge on September 12 and 13. A second sale will be held on the 24th in Collis Commonground for upperclassmen and the greater community.
The Sustainable Dartmouth coalition emerged from an environmental roundtable discussion during the fall of 2005 when Jim Merkel joined the Dartmouth campus as Sustainability Coordinator.
"We were looking for projects to do and one student suggested that we tackle the exorbitant waste that is seen at the end of every spring term," founding member Ruth Hupart '08 said.
According to the group's website, June sees a 300 percent jump in trash production over the yearly average.
Sustainable Dartmouth's "Sustainable Move-Out" in June addressed this problem by collecting goods from students that were moving out of their dorm rooms. During the Spring term, the group set up a system of bins in each residence hall to collect and separate small donations. In addition, specific areas were designated as drop-off zones for larger items.
Donated items included dozens of compact refrigerators, lamps, storage containers, electronics, cell phones, books and school supplies, hair driers, irons, ironing boards, coffee makers, toaster ovens, microwave ovens, and room humidifiers. Many of the items collected were new or barely used.
"In the clothing alone, we saw one hundred dollar shoes and blouses with the tags still on them," program co-coordinator Thomas Glazer '08 said.
The goal of the Sustainable Move-In event is to raise environmental awareness by engaging students and community members in a collaborative effort to save the college money, and yield sufficient income to fund the campaign in subsequent years, according to Sustainable Dartmouth. Additional profits will be donated to charities in the Upper Valley.
"[The event] will reduce our contribution to the landfill and help close the loop of consumption -- by which I mean that the incoming class of 2010 won't need to buy as many supplies from ethically troublesome places like Walmart," Hupart said.
Over the course of Summer term, Sustainable Dartmouth organized several sorting trips to the trailers, which are stored in the Thompson Arena parking lot. During these sorting sessions, students have cleaned fridges, thrown away items beyond repair and organized the trailers into workable sections of household items, appliances and miscellaneous objects, according to Hupart.
Sustainable Dartmouth is based on similar initiatives at other schools like Harvard, the University of Richmond and Bowdoin, although Dartmouth's program is unique in its almost complete student leadership.
According to Hupart, students assumed full responsibility for the event including renting trailers, deciding what items to accept and determining the best collection methods, as well as raising awareness of the project on campus.
"Dartmouth's sustainability office is still young and it doesn't have the infrastructure to tackle something of this magnitude [so] getting this project off the ground led to many meetings with administrators all throughout the term," Hupart said.
Hupart said that the project revealed the difference between the commonly held notion of student environmental activism and the actions that are actually being taken.
"Although there are still cases where activists take to the streets, we're also working within the system now. Maybe it's not as exciting, but it's more logical and we're not alienating people," she said.
