Residence Hall Move-out Programs

Each spring across the country, students depart their campuses for the summer and leave behind tons of valuable clothing, food, office supplies, appliances, furniture, and other materials. In this CURC webinar, moderated by Marc Fournier, Assistant Director for Plant Operations & Sustainability at Lasell College in Newton, MA, four presenters highlighted their campuses’ initiatives to donate or save and resell these resources.

The 2010-11 CURC webinar series presents a free technical case study and best practice presentation every other month. The series is made possible through the generous support of the Alcoa Foundation and Keep America Beautiful.

Slide Presentations

Julie Cahillane, Manager of Recycling and Refuse at Northwestern University, a small private school, will speak about its "Take it or Leave It" program, which collected almost 9,300 pounds of clothing and 419 pounds of food in 2010 with minimal resources and planning.
[Slides - 874kb PDF]

Jim Poole, Assistant Director for Operations, University Housing & Residential Life at Temple University, will provide an overview of Temple’s GIVE + GO GREEN initiative, which saved over 12,000 pounds of clothing, shoes, carpet, non-perishable food, art supplies, office supplies and small electronics. This initiative has so far only covered the residence halls that house 5,200 students.  Temple University is a semi-public urban institution where space is a challenge and materials must be collected and moved quickly.
[Slides - 968kb PDF]

John Patishnock  of Indiana University, a large public institution, will describe Hoosier to Hoosier (H2H), an initiative sponsored by the Office of Sustainability to create a sense of environmental awareness while simultaneously allowing the IU 40,000-member student body to become engaged in a philanthropic endeavor. Donated items are stored and resold right before the start of the fall semester.
[Slides - 2.68 MB PDF]

Ed Newman, Recycling & Refuse Manager at Ohio University, another large public institution, will speak about the benefits of its initiative called  “Move-Out- Fest,” where unwanted student items are collected and donated to those in need in Athens County.
[Slides - 2.32 MB PDF]

Audio-Video Files

Part I - Marc Fournier, Julie Cahillane, Jim Poole and John Patishnock (Quicktime .mov file)
Part II - John Patishnock and Ed Newman (Quicktime .mov file)

Presenter Biographies

Marc Fournier
Assistant Director for Plant Operations & Sustainability
Lasell College

Marc Fournier has 30 years experience in recycling and waste management, and is a LEED Accredited Professional.  A former Environmental Analyst with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, Director of Public Works in Hull, Senior Environmental Specialist with Haley & Aldrich, Inc., and Executive Director of WasteCap of Massachusetts, Fournier’s experience includes the development and implementation of one of the leading university waste management programs in the nation at UMass-Amherst, where the program achieved a remarkable recycling rate of 57 percent.  He also currently teaches night courses in Environmental Management, Global Warming, and Sustainable Operations Management in the UMass-Boston’s College of Management Graduate MBA program.

Julie Cahillane
Manager of Recycling and Refuse
Northwestern University

Since 1994 Julie Cahillane has been with Northwestern University where she manages recycling and refuse operations for the Evanston and Chicago campuses.  Her position entails contract management, program development and education.  She is a LEED AP and attempts to steer Northwestern in ‘green’ directions including serving as a founding member of the NU Sustainability Working Group.  Prior to working for Northwestern, Cahillane worked as an education coordinator for CRInc., a recycling company.  In this role, she researched and designed solid waste education programs addressing waste reduction, recycling and recycled product procurement.  Cahillane was recycling coordinator for the State of Illinois from 1991 to 1993. In this position, Julie was responsible for the State's statewide office recycling program.  She was appointed to the State of Illinois Task Force on Developing Markets for Recyclable Materials. NU Recycling’s efforts have been acknowledged with awards from the Illinois Recycling Association, the IL Governor’s Pollution Prevention Awards and the American Forest and Paper Association.  Cahillane has served as Secretary, Membership Chair and Midwest Regional Rep of the National Recycling Coalition's College and University Recycling Council (CURC) and was co-chair of the Illinois Recycling Association's College and University Caucus.

Jim Poole
Assistant Director for Operations, University Housing & Residential Life
Temple University

In addition to serving as the Assistant Director for Operations, University Housing & Residential Life, Jim Poole is also the Sustainability Committee Chairperson for the Association of College and University Housing Officers - International (ACUHO-I). Before 2007, Temple University did not have an Office of Sustainability, and before 2009, it did not have an end-of-year recycling program.  Under Poole’s leadership, Temple University now organizes an end-of-year clean-out event called GIVE+GO GREEN.  In the past year, Temple collected over 12,000 pounds of recycled material, which included clothing, shoes, carpet, non-perishable food, art supplies, office supplies and small electronics.  Additionally, he also organizes an end-of-year paper file clean-out in the University Housing & Residential Life office, sending 5,000 pounds of paper to be shredded and turned into pulp to make new paper at a local facility. This initiative has so far only covered the residence halls that house 5,200 students.  Temple University is a semi-public urban institution where space is a challenge.  In order to facilitate GIVE + GO GREEN, the university has to collect materials and move them quickly because there is very little space to store large amounts of collected material.  In 2011, Poole hopes to increase the amount of donated material to 15,000 pounds.

John Patishnock
Graduate Student
Indiana University

John Patishnock is currently a sportswriter for The Herald in Jasper, Ind., and a graduate student at Indiana University.  Patishnock has produced/directed two feature-length documentaries; one on a possible landfill being implemented in a rural area (about 30 minutes from the Penn State, University Park campus), and the other on Trash to Treasure, Penn State University's annual move-out sale. Hoosier to Hoosier (H2H) is an initiative brought forth by the Indiana University Office of Sustainability and was created during the 2009-10 academic school year. Patishnock will speak to how H2H helped create a new mindset on this campus with a study body numbering 40,000 by engendering a sense of environmental awareness while simultaneously allowing the IU student body to become engaged in a philanthropic endeavor. IU students donated reusable items that were stored at IU's Memorial Stadium for the duration of the summer, with all donations being made available to the general public during a sale held in August at Memorial Stadium, right before the start of the fall semester.

Ed Newman
Recycling and Refuse Manager
Ohio University

Ed Newman is the Recycling and Refuse Manager for Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, since 1990. Some say he has the best job on campus because he gets paid to dumpster dive. Each year, Ohio University tries to improve on its previous year’s efforts to deal with the pulse of solid waste that is generated during move-out.  Its move-out involves a lot of people to help make it work both on campus and off campus. Presently, the university is working on making it a community festival. The more people get involved, the more materials can be recovered and get to people in need as well as get recycled.