UNIVERSITY PARTNERS WITH LOCAL AGENCIES TO RECYCLE, REUSE

Some useful – and valuable – stuff gets discarded during the rush to clean out residence hall rooms and move home for the summer.

At the start of the annual rite of spring a couple of years ago, one student volunteer found a perfectly good set of golf clubs that had been discarded. He claimed them, and used them.

In addition to sporting goods, electronics, clothing, furniture, lamps, microwaves, food, clothing and toiletries got haphazardly thrown in dumpsters when they could have been donated to organizations that serve the community.

Since 2010, Anya Spear, associate director of campus planning, and student volunteers have worked to change the culture of waste with an event called Move Out. This year’s event runs May 8 through 17, when 1,800 students will vacate their rooms on the main campus. It is CSUMB’s largest waste diversion and educational outreach event of the year.

In 2014, the Move Out event generated 36.9 tons of waste, recycling and donations on main campus alone; 15.9 tons were diverted from the landfill, a 43 percent diversion rate. That’s one percent better than the year before.

This year’s effort includes volunteers to help educate students and convenient places to discard recyclables.

CSUMB’s waste hauler, Green Waste; Hope Services, which collects electronic waste and reusable items to support its programs ands services for people with disabilities; and the Food Bank for Monterey County are working with the university.

“Improving our waste diversion is part of our Climate Action Plan, helps us meet CSU and state recycling requirements and helps our community,” Spear said.