CU Boulder partners with city to reduce waste with student move-out

May 4—The University of Colorado Boulder and the city are working together to help reduce waste associated with student move-out on and off campus beginning next week.

The sudden move out of roughly 30,000 people from Boulder at the end of each academic year impacts the city in many ways, said Angie Gilbert, the zero waste program manager at the CU Boulder Environmental Center. One of those ways is a large increase in waste and a pattern of improper disposal of items such as appliances, couches, mattresses and more.

Joe Marino puts a bag of donated items in a bin on Wednesday. (Cliff Grassmick ??

Laurel Olsen, community engagement education and outreach senior program manager for public works utilities at the city, is involved in one of two city departments working with CU Boulder to reduce waste created by student move-out, specifically off campus.

Olsen said the city has seen a lot of improperly disposed of materials, particularly large items, around student move-in and move-out days.

"One of the challenges that creates is the stuff that gets improperly disposed of ends up in our right of ways, our public spaces, and a lot of times ends up in our creeks," Olsen said.

Besides being unsightly, the extra debris in the creeks causes issues like increased flood risk and water quality problems, Olsen said.

Sandy Briggs, sustainability program manager in the climate initiatives department for Boulder, is involved with the second city department involved in reducing student move-out waste.

To help reduce improperly disposed of materials at move-out, Briggs and Olsen have created a pilot program with a budget granted by the Boulder City Council. They hired roll-off dumpsters to be placed in 15 locations near students living off campus, with specific focus on Goss Grove and University Hill.

The dumpsters are there so students can dispose of their items properly without dumping it on a street corner, Briggs said. Once move-out is over, the city will be able to see what kind of materials are thrown away and create a plan moving forward.

"Of what we get, we're going to use that to inform hopefully the development of a program next year going forward that would allow students to share more, to donate more, to take advantage of the huge amount of thrift stores," Briggs said.

While the city is working to reduce waste off campus, Gilbert is leading the effort on campus to reduce waste in residence hall move-out through an annual donation drive.

The donation drive has bins at every residence hall on campus for clothes, fans, storage, personal care, nonperishables, books, hangers, laundry detergent, breakables and other household goods to donate to community partners. Those partners include USAgain, Resource Central, Emergency Family Assistance Association, Hope for Longmont, the basic needs center at CU Boulder and the on-campus food pantry.

Last year, the donation drive donated 17.32 tons of materials to the Boulder or Denver community for people in need.

"I think the biggest push here is to have less impact on the Boulder community and to have the students that come here in their first year kind of learn all these practices, all these things we're doing for mitigating waste and being good stewards," Gilbert said.

Student staff that work at the CU Boulder environmental center go through the donations daily until move-out is over. Senior Joe Marino is one of the students who helps sort the donations and said it's important to take resources out of where they create waste and get it to people in need.

"If we don't do anything with it, it's just going to go into a landfill," Marino said.

Gilbert said the large amounts of waste come from a disconnect between what students buy and what they actually need in their residence halls. Briggs said reducing waste and reusing items are values the Boulder community has that they want students to know and practice.

"The whole idea is to get behaviors to change," Olsen said. "We have an opportunity to really target this age group. ... If you can change behaviors at a time when they're more receptive to receiving them, then the impact has a domino effect."