These students can donate their used housewares to the Hoosier to Hoosier community sale, the community reuse program. The Hoosier to Hoosier community sale collects used housewares from its students in the spring and sells the housewares back to ?students in the fall.
Students living on campus can drop off their used housewares in donation boxes located in residence halls and campus apartments, while students living off campus can drop off their used housewares at The Warehouse, located at 1525 S. Rogers St.
IU is not the only university to collect used housewares from its students, said Dana Schroeder, the sustainability peer educator program coordinator under the IU Office of Sustainability.
“There are a ton, a ton, a ton of schools doing these types of programs, because they’re so specific to university campuses,” she said.
Depending on the university, these items can be donated to local stores and organizations, donated to students or sold to students. These efforts further fund sustainability efforts, Schroeder said.
Students can donate and purchase a range of items including housewares, kitchenware, furniture, décor, appliances, electronics, entertainment, school supplies, sports equipment, clothes and unopened food, according the IU Office of ?Sustainability website.
“The Hoosier to Hoosier sale is really exciting because college campuses are really unique in terms of waste from home goods,” she said. “When you’ve got a new group of freshmen moving to campus every year and a group of seniors moving off campus every year, there’s a lot of turnover in the stuff that they use. We’ve got this huge potential for reuse in ?Bloomington.”
Schroeder said the community sale is also meant to encourage students to think about the stages through which their housewares go.
Housewares go through five stages: extraction, manufacturing, transportation, consumption and disposal, Schroeder said. While recycling only brings items from the disposal stage back to the manufacturing stage, reusing skips the manufacturing stage, bringing items from the disposal stage back to the consumption stage.
“The Hoosier to Hoosier sale is trying to make our consumption of home goods more cyclical instead of linear,” she said.
Students, however, must both donate used items and buy used items to make the cycle successful. Schroeder said students often find donating used items easier than purchasing used items, particularly because they must purchase the used items in replacement of new items, not in ?addition to new items.
In 2013, the Hoosier to Hoosier community sale diverted 45 tons from the landfill and raised $32,850 for further sustainability efforts around IU and the City of Bloomington, up from 20 tons and $10,469 in 2010, according to the IU Office of Sustainability website.
This year, the community sale will take place Saturday, Aug. 22, at The Warehouse.
For additional information, visit sustain.?indiana.edu.
