Describe your program and how it enhanced student life at OSU.
Dump + Run is a program sponsored annually by Students for Recycling. It promotes sustainability, service, education, and unity at the university, among other things. In the spring, as students prepared to move out for the summer, bins were placed in all of the dorms for students to donate any unwanted, reusable items or nonperishable food items. We accepted anything ranging from clothing and furniture to office supplies and appliances. We rented moving trucks as it got closer to the end of the year to pick up donations from students off-campus, who scheduled pickups through our hotline or separate email address. Donations of the nonperishable food items were made to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank, and this year we donated over 300 lbs of food. After storing the items over the summer in a warehouse, we held a large sale at the Jesse Owens North Recreation Center, attempting to sell all of the donations.
During the collection process we hired volunteers from other student organizations while paying them by the hour with money made from the sale. We hope that by including other organizations, we can all learn something from each other while everyone learns more about the importance of recycling and reusing. We also understand the importance of fundraising for each student organization, especially new or newly reinstated ones. It can get fairly difficult to find successful fundraisers for student organizations, and with organizations choosing what hours they are to work, they can make much more than typical fundraisers.
A large portion of the proceeds went into purchasing individual recycling bins for Blackburn House. We wanted to give back to the university in a meaningful and tangible way. Hopefully the university will be able to fund the bins for all of the dorms in the near future, but in the mean time we felt that the learning community with the Environment & Natural Resource Scholars would benefit and appreciate them most.
This program provides a number of services for the university, its students, and the surrounding community. The first service we hope to provide is to save as much as we can from going to landfills. Secondly, we saved almost 5 tons from going to the landfill just this past year, and we’ve saved close to 60 tons over the last 5. We also provide students with an opportunity for expelling their unwanted items in the spring. By accommodating students in this way, we are providing them with an outlet for purchasing inexpensive items to furnish their dorms, houses, or apartments and other items that will be useful for their success in the upcoming year. The most important goal we hope to accomplish with our program is to educate students and the community about the important of recycling and reusing. With all of the environmental problems we are already facing and will continue to face, everyone needs to be educated on what they can to do help. All of these services are also taken advantage of by the general public since our sale is open to all. The last goal we feel that we are achieving is in the collaboration with other organizations and university departments. This year we worked with 26 student organizations, paying them over $2700. We also worked extensively with the university’s Department of Facilities Operations and Development. Our program could not have run without them – they organized the distribution of the collection bins in all of the dorms as well as the pickup and delivery of these bins to the warehouse space.
Why is this program the most outstanding at OSU? How does it actively involve students, embrace the university initiatives of diversity and/or collaborate with other organizations or university departments?
This program greatly enhances diversity, social interaction, learning and service on the campus as well as the community. We approach the promotion of diversity by having a number of very different groups across campus volunteer and work together, uniting them under one common goal. This unity of groups helps promote social interaction and has all of the volunteers involved with service, while learning about the importance of reusing and recycling.
We hope that community understands our goals of the program as well and hopefully we can help change their minds about donating their gently used things. We also provide the service of inexpensive goods for them and the campus. Another service we do for the community is the donation of all left over items. This year we donated somewhere around 30 large trash bags of clothes to the Make A Difference Day Collection. They hold the Good Neighbors’ Picnic, which is a program that distributes warm clothing and blankets to the homeless as it gets close to the winter. The rest of the items that we had were donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill.
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