Give & Go Green 2009 a Huge Success!

Give and Go Green is an initiative organized by the Eco-Reps and the Office of Residential Life and Housing to reduce the waste disposed by students at the end of the academic year. Every year when students finish exams and move out of the dorms they get rid of clothing, appliances, books, toiletries, and more that they can’t take with them over the summer. Give and Go Green redirects the otherwise discarded items from the landfill to organizations that will use them.

Steve Tolman, the Associate Director of Residential Life and Housing, was impressed by this year's results: "The Give and Go Green program was a huge success again this year. It enables us to help the community while further reducing the College's carbon footprint." Students, administrators and faculty members donated clothing, food, household goods, etc. to the collection centers located in the residence halls. "After collecting all the items to donate, it was truly staggering to look at how much stuff there was, realizing without this program all these items would have been thrown away." This year’s Give and Go Green collected:

• 3 full 17' moving trucks of items donated to the Salvation Army
• 1 pickup truck full of food donated to the church soup kitchen on 114th & Broadway
• 15,000 plastic bags to be recycled via Fairway grocery store

The Eco-Reps worked hard to coordinate and facilitate this extraordinary program, and a special thanks goes out to EcoReps Kirsten Scheu '10 and Aja Hazelhoff '09 for taking the lead on this project. Scheu, an Eco-rep since Fall of 2007, was thrilled that "all of the items donated to The Salvation Army, Rock and Wrap it Up and the 114th Broadway-Presbyterian church will end up in great hands. But ultimately, the enormous volume that we collect and donate speaks to the massive amount of stuff that students accumulate throughout the year. As EcoReps, we hope to encourage limited and thoughtful consumption in addition to reusing, recycling and donating." Hazelhoff, also an Eco-Rep since Fall 2007, echoed Scheu's conviction. "Witnessing the staggering volume of things--most of which are perfectly usable-- that are suddenly considered trash once move-out begins was a shock. The spatial constraints faced by college students, especially those in New York City, dictate that students really have no choice but to store only those items which are deemed essential--everything else is necessarily considered trash. What we as EcoReps wanted to do was to provide an alternative destination for the diverse array of things, everything from food to furniture to toiletries, that would otherwise end up in a dumpster."

Read about Barnard's recycling centers to learn about how you can divert your waste from landfills throughout the year. Visit our tips on what you can do to be more sustainable year-round.