Hoos ReUse Diverts Student Cast-Offs From the Landfill

University News

Hoos ReUse Diverts Student Cast-Offs From the Landfill

May 31, 2022 • By Matt Kelly, mkelly@virginia.edu Matt Kelly, mkelly@virginia.edu

Used furniture piled inside a metal container

When students head home for the summer, they discard a lot of furniture. �鶹�ƽ�� Office of Sustainability works with a pair of organizations to repurpose what’s left behind. (Contributed photo)

Cast-off student furniture doesn’t just go away on its own – teams of people help it along.

As University of Virginia students moved from their residence halls and off-Grounds housing at the end of the academic year, an annual effort called “Hoos ReUse,” working with Goodwill and Refurnished Charlottesville, collected discarded furniture and household items to put to good use. Goodwill resells items in its stores and Refurnish Charlottesville finds new homes for other items.

“Hoos ReUse is our annual donation drive at the end of the school year to try to get the students a space to donate gently used items instead of tossing them in the landfill, which is unfortunately one of the more convenient options for students moving out,” said Lela Garner, an outreach and engagement specialist with Facilities Management’s Office of Sustainability. “The idea is that we divert materials from the landfill and we are able to get some of these items that can have a second life back to community members in town.”

This month, Hoos ReUse collected furniture, clothing, books, small appliances and other items that students placed in blue boxes distributed around Grounds near residence halls. The items are turned directly over to Goodwill for sale in its stores. Meanwhile, the fledgling Refurnished Charlottesville works with the off-Grounds student community to collect its items.

“Refurnished and Hoos ReUse have done our best to complement one another’s strengths and raise greater awareness together,” said Alec Brewer, a founder of Refurnished Charlottesville. “Hoos ReUse specializes mostly in on- and near-Grounds, somewhat centralized recovery, and we try to offer pickup and drop-off services for students off-Grounds and in the broader Charlottesville community who are not able to do so themselves.”

Re-Furnished does not charge for its drop-off and pick-up services. The organization has been funded through grants and is now establishing a donation system.

Neither group repairs damaged items, which is why Garner said that the donations need to be “gently used.”

“We don’t have any repair options available as of right now, so we don’t service items apart from just collecting them,” �鶹�ƽ�� Garner said. “During the sorting process, they make a decision as to whether that item is viable and if it is not viable – if a mirror breaks during transportation – they will try to recycle that if possible. And if recycling is not a viable option given the material or the state of the item, they will toss it into the landfill. So they will make a judgment call as to what is viable for the community.”

Brewer of Refurnished Charlottesville added, “We clean and try to tune up any furniture we receive, but do not yet have the capacity to perform full repairs. That is very much something we’d like to expand into working with the community on in the future.”

Lisa Sexton, the eastern district manager for Goodwill, said there was nothing particularly unusual collected this year.

“It is mostly fans, clothes, books, plastic containers and bed toppers,” she said.

Garner said students leave a lot of books and especially three-drawer plastic storage units.

�鶹�ƽ�� sustainability office has had a program to collect student discards for many years, but had to suspend the program in recent years because of COVID.

“The last year we operated normally was 2019,” Garner said. “Last year we had these outdoor drop-off boxes, but we aren’t able to collect nearly as much as you can imagine. Students are much more willing to drop off items in their dorm spaces than to carry things outside to these drop-off boxes.”

Garner said this year’s diversion goal is between 15,000 to 20,000 pounds, which she said would be good considering how COVID has hampered logistics.

“We’ve diverted 237,920 pounds since the program started in 2010,” she said. “That’s an average of 21,629 pounds per year.”

Refurnished Charlottesville suffered from the pandemic as well.

“I was one of the original founders of Refurnished and was inspired to start working on such a project after seeing all of the furniture left behind, much of which my roommates and I put to use after most of my peers left town in the summer in 2019,” Brewer, a 2021 UVA biomedical engineering graduate, said. “Now, in year two, we’re continuing to tune the model and are trying to nail it in hopes of making an even bigger impact here and one day being able to recreate it in other college towns.”

Brewer said Refurnish Charlottesville would not be able to do its work without other local organizations, such as the Haven, Love Inc., Earlysville Exchange, Habitat Cville and others.

Now that students have moved out, Garner said, it is time to start planning ahead.

“With waste minimization being a really big part of the University right now, I would really like to focus on not just move-out, but also the move-in practices for the summer,” Garner said. “We want to make sure we make it easy as possible for students to not have to throw things in the landfill when they are moving in or when they are moving out.”