June 2005

Briefly speaking: Want not, waste not

Clothing and other items left behind when students move out of residence halls in June are sold to bargain hunters in the fall. (Le Tran/R4)

Students can accumulate a lot of stuff in one year. Clothes, food, books, bicycles and more are often disposed of in the rush to move out of the residence halls and on to other things.

But many of those items are in good condition, and there are ways to divert them from the landfill to someone who wants or needs them.

The UC Davis Student Housing Office and the R4 Recycling Program's Resource Recovery Drive provides an easy way for students in the residence halls to discard unwanted items while closing the recycling loop.

'Really good stuff'

From June 9 through 17, students can place items in donation bags provided by Student Housing and drop them off at designated locations in the residence hall areas.

Those items will then be collected and sorted. Non-perishable food will go to the local food bank, while other items will be stored until October, when R4 will hold its annual sale at the Memorial Union. There, students can rummage through the items and purchase things at garage-sale prices.

Lin King is program manager for R4 Recyling on campus. (Debbie Aldridge/UC Davis)

"A lot of the stuff we get is really good stuff," says Lin King, R4 program manager. "Some of the clothes still have the tags on them."

Last year, the drive diverted almost 2,800 pounds of materials from the campus landfill, he says.

R4 also made about $800 from the sale, which offset expenses and provided a donation to the student-run Whole Earth Festival, which provided volunteers for the sale.

"It's really not for the money of it, it's for promoting the value of reuse," King says.

Students can also donate items in good condition to non-profit organizations and thrift shops in the area.

Remove or store bicycles

Bicycles are often abandoned during move-out time, but Transportation and Parking Services officials are reminding students that bikes not in use over the summer must be removed from campus grounds.

TAPS provides summer storage for licensed bikes for only $8. Students can take bikes to TAPS from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. June 9 to 10 and June 13 to 17 to be stored for the summer.

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