This article originally appeared in Waterloo's Daily Bulletin. A message from Campus Housing:
What happens with the leftover belongings that students leave in residence after they move out?
“There are a lot of students who move out of residence and often they can’t take their stuff with them, which is fair, but if you think about thousands of students moving out from residence each year, that’s a lot of stuff," says Lyndia Littel, project manager, strategic initiatives and investment. "This isn’t a new problem. Every university or college town faces this issue, but we want to do our part to tackle waste from move-outs and make our campus more sustainable.”
This initiative began as a pilot for spring term residence move out and diverted 1,400 lbs of unwanted belongings (everything from non-perishable food items to clothes, electronics, kitchen supplies, you name it!). Spring term holds the least number of residents across all three terms so we knew our impact would grow with thousands of students set to join us in the fall.
We are proud to announce that after the fall term, 1,900 lbs of discarded student belongings were diverted from the landfill just by sorting these unwanted items appropriately. Approximately 1,000 complete move outs occurred in December (which is comparable to the spring term). However, with the end of winter term just around the corner, will see over 5,200 students leave residence and our impact continue to grow.
Thank you to our partners (past and present), including the Sustainability Office, WUSA, Dana Porter Library, Mission Thrift Store and The Working Centre.