With PennMOVES, old dorm items become charitable fundraisers

Students can make their move-out philanthropic with PennMOVES.

Penn Business Services created PennMOVES three years ago in order to make Penn more sustainable by reducing student waste and providing contributions to the West Philadelphia community, according to Vice President of Business Services Marie Witt. Items donated during move-out will be sold to the community, Witt said.

The proceeds from PennMOVES sales will be donated to United Way, a company that distributes money to West Philadelphian charities.

Students cannot travel far with heavy items like refrigerators or lamps and therefore discard many usable items, which later end up in land fields, Witt explained. In order to prevent such waste, various collection points were set up around campus, including a trailer for the collection of items in Hamilton Village and wooden crate bins located in the Lower and Upper Quads, according to project leader and associate director of Housing Information Centers and Events Glenn Stieffenhofer.

Eco-reps from the Hill, Kings Court and Rodin College Houses are leading student participation in this initiative, Stieffenhofer said. The eco-reps oversaw the process within the buildings as well as raised residential awareness, he added.

“We monitored the drop-off site in my dorm during move-out time,” Wharton freshman and Kings Court College House Eco-Rep Amelia Wilson said. “We check that students weren’t donating any unacceptable items, that they were putting their items in the appropriate bins, and scheduled pick-ups with PennMOVES when the site got full.”

Volunteers at the Class of 1923 ice rink, including Penn Environmental Group and United Way representatives, will organize and store the material until the sale on June 5, Witt explained. The items are “really reasonably priced” so that the members of the community can take advantage of them, Business Service spokeswoman Barbara Lea-Kruger said. What is not sold will be donated to various agencies, including Penn Veterinary Medicine, she added.

The first annual sale was held last year at the ice rink. Penn saved 90,000 pounds of waste and raised $30,000, Witt said.

“Personally I plan to reuse all my stuff so I didn’t really have stuff to get rid of,” College sophomore Rebecca Platoff said. “But I think its great that people who do have stuff to get rid of are trying to benefit the community.”

Stieffenhofer said he hopes that someday this process will not be required and students will have diminished their need to buy disposable items.

This initiative will make the students question how they can be more sustainable, Lea-Kruger said. Many students have become involved in this event, according to Wilson.

“PennMOVES is a gem of an idea,” Wilson said. “It’s ridiculous to think of all of those perfectly good items being sent to the landfill, year after year, when there are so many people who could use those items.”

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