Ecologue

Official results are in: OSU residents donated nearly 36,000 pounds  – 18 tons – during this year’s Residence Hall Move-Out Donation Drive!

This includes an estimated:

• 15,502 pounds of housewares
• 4,119 pounds of food, toiletries and school supplies
• 8,191 pounds of clothing, linens and shoes
• 7,864 pounds of loft kit wood

That’s a total of 35,676 pounds of donations!

These weights completely smashed our original 24,000-pound goal and reached the highest level since weight tracking began in 2010.

Donations of housewares, food, toiletries, school supplies, clothing, linens and shoes were 19 to 33 percent higher this year. The largest increase came from wood, which totaled 7,864 pounds – an over 600 percent increase from the previous year. The large increase in wood donations may be a product of more residents using loft kits and donating the wood instead of taking it home or throwing it away.

We are unclear as to why donations increased as much as they did. Given we do not have weight data for trash, we are unable to speculate if donations were higher because less was landfilled. Regardless, we are very happy to see such a large increase from last year. Our residents made a great showing this year and our team put in an amazing effort to get it hauled, sorted, and distributed to nonprofits.

Special thanks to the over 50 volunteers who gave approximately 250 hours of time to pick-up and sort donations and to all the residents who donated!

Learn a bit about how the program is coordinated here and find out who received donations on our Donation Drive webpage.

The Res. Hall Move-out Donation Drive is an annual event coordinated by Campus Recycling in collaboration with Surplus Property and University Housing and Dining.