The stuff that students leave behind
Excerpted and edited from an ecoRI News article by Frank Carini
PROVIDENCE — Two Providence East Side women have a concept of a plan to stop clothes, vacuums, furniture, and books from being buried in Johnston, site of Rhode Island’s state landfill.
After our publisher and my wife, Joanna Detz, and I recently spoke with the duo, at Coffee Exchange on Wickenden Street, ecoRI News agreed to work with them to find a solution. I volunteered to be a grunt.
College move-out carelessness is a problem that mars the state capital every spring. Neighborhoods around Brown University are routinely littered with abandoned clothing, comforters, sheets, electronics, picture frames, books, unused notebooks, plastic shelving, shoe racks, cleaning supplies and other household items, food (some 42 tons nationwide), and beat-up furniture in need of a little TLC.
The average college student living in a dormitory generates an estimated 640 pounds of waste annually, with extreme waste coming at the end of the academic year, according to a study published in March. These spring spikes are what concern Sara Dorsch and Carolyn Birnbaum.