With the end of every winter semester comes a week of excitement and stress as students prepare to move out of residence halls, houses and apartments. Ann Arbor doesn’t empty out completely, however. As cars are loaded with luggage and housing cards returned, students leave behind reminders of their presence: thousands of pounds of discarded furniture, clothing, decorations and more.
During the 2023 spring move-out period, the University of Michigan’s Student Move-Out Donation Program collected 9.7 tons of material, including bed frames, clothes and perishable food items, and donated various local organizations including it to HouseN2Home, Ann Arbor PTO Thrift Shop, Goodwill and Maize & Blue Cupboard.
Earlier this year, the University formed a new coalition with local non-profit organizations and the city of Ann Arbor, which organized an initiative to collect as much discarded waste as possible. Local organizations participating in the coalition and having collected donations in years prior include HouseN2Home, Kiwanis and Jewish Family Services.
During the 2024 spring move-out period, students who lived in on-campus housing could donate materials to drop boxes found in residence halls. For those who lived off-campus, HouseN2Home provided curb-side pickup at local sororities and apartment complexes. Students with access to vehicular transportation could leave donations in city-designated areas.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Sarah Mason, resource recovery manager for the City of Ann Arbor, said the idea for the coalition came from discussions of a collaboration with the goal of maximizing waste reduction.
“We recognize that there’s a lot of material items that are in good condition, good usable condition, but end up in the trash, and the city itself doesn’t have a big enough pool of resources to handle that,” Mason said. “So, we wanted to bring together a group of community partners to look for ways that we can work together to recover more of that material.”
Jennifer Petoskey, solid waste and program specialist for the City of Ann Arbor, told The Daily the University collected between nine and 10 tons of clothing, and other local organizations involved collectively gathered one ton of clothing from on-campus sororities.
“We collected at least a ton of clothes from the sororities,” Petoskey said. “(The University) estimates the same numbers as last year — nine to 10 tons. Regarding recycling, we (the City of Ann Arbor) recycled about almost seven tons of material from our drop-off site … HouseN2Home estimated 12 to 13 tons of material recovered.”
Petoskey also said capacity was a major challenge for the local organizations involved as they aren’t able to gather all donations made at every location in the city.
“These organizations see a lot of materials at this time, and they don’t necessarily have the capacity to take everything that’s out there,” Petoskey said. “And so what else comes along with that is the upstream solutions: can we encourage people to bring less? Can we encourage them to store and reuse it next year, things like that? What are those things that reduce the overall amount of things going into the trash too?”
In an interview with The Daily, Bryan Weinert, a senior resultant at Iris Waste Diversion Specialists, said he felt uniting multiple organizations from around Ann Arbor helped make a greater impact on the city.
“To me, there’s always great power when you can take a couple of causes and bring them together,” Weinert said. “So when you could … take an environmental initiative and a social initiative and bring them together, there’s so much more power and potential from that. And that’s a very exciting piece of this too, and hopefully is a motivator for people to take those extra steps.”
HouseN2Home, founded in 2017 to furnish the homes and apartments of community members coming out of homelessness, has been collecting donations during move-in and move-out weeks at the University for years prior. In an interview with The Daily, Heidi Ruud, a volunteer at HouseN2Home since 2020, said the formation of the coalition increased communication between organizations similar to hers and led to more coverage across Ann Arbor.
“I think this year, there was more dialogue so that we all know about each other,” Ruud said. “For example, I called JFS, and I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m taking this neighborhood. You can take this neighborhood.’ This is how we did it.”
Ruud said although the city has a dedicated space for community members to deposit waste, she felt many of the families and students who donated to HouseN2Home were glad their items could be reused.
“They’re so happy to know that their stuff is going to be put to use, because the alternative is to put it in the garbage can, and it’s going to go to the landfill,” Ruud said. “The City of Ann Arbor has a site set up on (S) Industrial (Hwy) for people to bring waste, but not a lot of people have cars, time or effort. So we’re the only ones really on campus trying to save a lot of stuff from the landfill which then is used for really good use.”
According to Ruud, HouseN2Home partnered with 11 Michigan sororities, seven off-campus high-rise apartment buildings, Beyond the Diag and other residential groups to collect furniture donations. However, because HouseN2Home is unable to collect clothing donations, the organization partnered with other initiatives like Zero Waste and A2Zero through the coalition.
In an interview with The Daily, Lydia McMullen-Laird, co-founder of Zero Waste, spoke about her organization’s assistance in involvement in this year’s move-out period, including providing volunteers to collect donations at various sororities and apartment buildings and collaborating with HouseN2Home.
“We provided volunteers to pick up a lot of clothing … in addition to furnishings and stuff is something that people often just don’t have enough space to take with them,” McMullen-Laird said. “So, students end up throwing it out a lot of the time. We did clothing collections and with sororities and also apartment buildings, we had volunteers go out and collect hundreds of pounds of clothing.”
McMullen-Laird said Zero Waste volunteers also provided advice to students and families about donating reusable materials in hopes that move-out periods could become less overwhelming for students in the future.
“The more that we can mobilize volunteers to go pick stuff up or have drop-off points or just make it really, really easy so that students who might not have cars don’t need to be driving all the way across town, the more we can kind of build that infrastructure out, to make that easier, the better from our perspective,” McMullen-Laird. “But also just letting people know that a lot of these resources exist. Some people just don’t know or maybe need a reminder.”
While McMullen-Laird expressed optimism about efforts to reduce waste generated during the move-in and move-out weeks, she said redistributing donations back into the community through local thrifting is an alternative way for students to support these organizations.
“One thing I really encourage students to do is when they get here, instead of ordering something off Amazon, to check out all the many thrift shops in Ann Arbor, all the secondhand resources to kind of keep it in circulation,” McMullen-Laird said. “Also the Ann Arbor community because these organizations that are taking all these donations and stuff, they also need support and the best way you can support is by buying stuff.”
In an interview with The Daily, Engineering freshman Lilly Stidham, vice president of strategy for the Environmental Consulting Organization at the University of Michigan, said having access to donation avenues through the coalition not only keeps quality items out of the landfill but also connects community members together.
“It’s easy to throw things away, but when you have resources and these coalitions that are helping, you’re not only helping the environment, but you’re also helping build community,” Stidham said.
ECO-UM previously partnered with Zero Waste for a Zero Waste Week event on campus and has had conversations with local businesses on how to build a cyclical economy that keeps materials from going to waste. Stidham said the coalition is an important opportunity for students and environmental justice organizations to become involved in the community to work toward a zero-waste future.
“(These groups) are paving the way … for socially responsible sustainability efforts that are going to be really important, especially within Ann Arbor itself,” Stidham said. “Because while we do have a bunch of organizations that are involved in campus and environmental sustainability, we also need to branch out more. I think these coalitions create opportunities for students to get engaged in different ways that aren’t necessarily obvious.”
Summer News Editors Claudia Minetti and Marissa Corsi can be reached at cminetti@umich.edu and macorsi@umich.edu.
6/17 Correction: The article has been updated with a source name correction
