A Mad Dash for Trash

  • Penn State is luring people to its annual "Trash to Treasure" event with gimmicks such as going for the "most people disguised as Groucho Marx" record. (Photo courtesy of Penn State University)

Each spring when college students leave their dorms, they leave behind tons of unwanted furniture, rugs, and other stuff that just didn’t make the cut for the trip back home. At one time, it all would’ve ended up in a landfill. In recent years, some universities have been sorting out the usable items and holding huge yard sales. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan took her pocketbook and her microphone to one of those big sales:

Transcript

Each spring when college students leave their dorms, they leave behind tons of unwanted
furniture, rugs, and other stuff that just didn’t make the cut for the trip back home. At one time,
it all would’ve ended up in a landfill. In recent years, some universities have been sorting out the
usable items and holding huge yard sales. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan took her
pocketbook and her microphone to one of those big sales:


“Welcome to the fifth annual Trash to Treasure sale. Let the excitement begin.”


At 7:30 a.m., the gates to Beaver football stadium at Penn State are hoisted and thousands of
people run through six metal corrals. It’s a mad dash for CD players, stuffed animals, and other
remnants of college. Sixty-six tons… of stuff. What’s with kids leaving behind all this, and that
$215 chichi bronze silk purse – with tag intact?


“No one wants to take it home. I mean to fit all that stuff in a car – it’s awful. It’s really hard to
do. So I mean if you can’t fit it you might as well leave it and leave it for somebody else.”


Erin Horning is a college student herself. She’s here for the fourth year in a row.


“I was a freshman in college this past year so I came here to get all my college stuff from the
students that already left like irons, and oh, furniture….”


Penn State’s Environmental Strategies Team started the Trash to Treasure sale to keep leftover
lumber and coffee mugs out of the waste stream. Other major colleges around the country are
following suit, including Notre Dame and West Virginia University. Penn State spokesman Paul
D. Ruskin says it also saves the school 43-hundred dollars in hauling costs.

“We had a problem. We had 60 to 70 tons of usable material left behind. And the solution which
we found was to have this massive sale and to have the items donated to this sale. And to have
United Way take over and manage the sale.”


The charity brings in 300 volunteers who sort sale items over a few weeks. Bethany Heim
volunteered for 19 shifts. She and her husband are also first in line for the sale, having arriving
around midnight.


(sound of people in stadium)


“I came for a vacuum. It started as a joke when I started volunteering here three weeks ago.
And now I found THE vacuum.”

Heim says that besides keeping trash out of landfills, the sale benefits the community in other
ways.


“They have stuff put away for Katrina victims. I’m sure some of it will make its way to the flood
victims in New England. And just that it’s not on the sides of the streets – ’cause driving
through town when you see all the furniture from the college kids on the sides of the streets.”


Penn State tries to bring more customers in every year. The school’s Paul D. Ruskin admits that
the county market for box fans has already been saturated. So now it’s trying to generate
enthusiasm with gimmicks. Like this year’s attempt to break the record for the most people
wearing Groucho Marx masks. The effort fell 138 people shy. Still, the United Way netted 45,000 dollars. And as for Bethany Heim…


“I got my vacuum!”


And with happy customers like that, universities are starting to realize that selling all the college
student leftovers is good P.R. as well as just good sense.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

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A MAD DASH FOR TRASH (Short Version)

When college students head home for the summer, the unmatched dishware and stuffed animals that filled dorms often become trash, but a number of schools are turning stadiums into sale grounds and hawking the remnants of college life. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan has more:

Transcript

When college students head home for the summer, the unmatched dishware and stuffed animals
that filled dorms often become trash, but a number of schools are turning stadiums into sale
grounds and hawking the remnants of college life. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan has
more:


When college lets out, dumpsters get overwhelmed with tons of students’ belongings, but not at
a few major universities. Five years ago, Penn State started getting students to donate their
goods. The school invited the local United Way to sort area rugs and shoes, to run a sale and
to reap the profits. Notre Dame and West Virginia University followed suit.


Paul D. Ruskin is a Penn State spokesman.


“It is a solution that has no downside. It keeps things out of the landfill. It keeps down Penn
State operating costs. It makes nice items available to families at a good price. And it helps a
charitable organization.”


It’s also a big draw. More than five-thousand people attended Penn State’s event this year.
Other universities are reporting similar turnouts.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

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Seniors Find Niche in Environmental Work

  • In the forefront, Evelyn Kolojejchick, Ivan Pettit, and John Lundquist help to improve water quality as part of the Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement. (Photo by John Kolojejchick)

Environmental work isn’t just for young professionals anymore. Retired engineers, former biology teachers, and others with time on their hands are working on environmental problems as volunteers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan reports on how senior citizens are keeping environmentally active:

Transcript

Environmental work isn’t just for young professionals anymore.
Retired engineers, former biology teachers, and others with time on their hands are working on

environmental problems as volunteers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan

reports on how senior citizens are keeping environmentally active:


(Sound of bird)


75-year-old Ivan Pettit is officially retired from his job as an environmental regulator, but he

hasn’t stopped monitoring streams, promoting recycling, and solving a nagging safety issue in his

state.


(Sound of walking)


On a sunny day in Oil Creek State Park in northeast Pennsylvania, he drops a stone down a corroded

pipe.


“Okay, go.”


(Sound of rattling, splash)


Pettit is estimating the depth of this remnant of an old oil well. It’s one of thousands of

abandoned oil wells in this region. The wells date as far back as 1859. Pettit and a team of senior

volunteers regularly hunt for old wells. The seniors’ work improves water quality and safety for

hikers and hunters, and Pettit says it helps keeps him fit.


“It is work that I have always enjoyed doing as well as getting you outdoors and being able to

observe the things that’s going on around you, that is not a sedentary task whatsoever.”


Pettit belongs to the national Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement. The group claims

members as young as fifty-five. Pennsylvania has the third highest number of residents older than

sixty among U.S. states. Its active Senior Environmental Corps is touted as a national model, and

has been honored by the United Nations Environmental Program.


But senior groups across the nation are working on environmental problems. In Cape Cod, they

monitor West Nile virus. Seniors clean hazardous waste sites in Indiana. Michigan volunteers

install solar water heaters on poor peoples’ homes.


It’s a fast growing program. In 1993, 26 older adults made up the Senior Environment Corps. A

decade later, over 100 thousand were involved in work across the country.


Ivan Pettit’s work looking for old oil wells is the kind of effort that makes a real difference.

Besides being a hazard for hikers and hunters, some of the old wells seep oil into the ground and

it gets into streams.


In less than two years, the seniors have found almost two hundred wells. Environmental Alliance for

Senior Involvement president Tom Benjamin compares that to two college interns who worked full-time

one summer, and found fewer than fifty.


“Most of these individuals that were volunteers know that community and know the area. They grew up

there, they hunted those woods, they know what a oil well looks like, so they have some instant

recognition.”


(Sound of forest)


Every other week, from spring to fall, the well hunters line up horizontally, twenty feet apart,

and comb a section of forest. Some well holes are several feet across and twenty feet deep. Others

have narrow openings, but drop as deep as a thousand feet. Evelyn Kolojejchick and her husband John

lead Ivan Pettit and other volunteers in seeking out the wells and marking coordinates.


“Ok, longitude is?”


“Seventy-Nine.”


For both Evelyn and John Kolojejchick, well-hunting and other environmental projects are an

extension of teaching high school science for thirty years. Evelyn once aimed to spark interest in

many young minds. Now she feels she’s working on a smaller scale, but hopes to remain effective.


“I belong to Audubon, used to belong to a lot of other environmental organizations and it just

seemed like you needed… you needed to do something that was going to make a difference. I never

had any money to donate to all of these causes and you just you know, you want to do something that

an individual can do.”


Recently, the seniors saw results of well-hunting. They found sensitive species in a stream that

had once been polluted. Several oil wells nearby had been sealed with cement to keep acid mine

drainage out of the water.


“The first year we tested it for aquatic life, there was almost nothing there. And yesterday when

we were there, we had better diversity in that stream than we have in some of our streams that we

test all along that we know don’t have those kinds of problems. So they have made a significant

difference on that stream by plugging those wells. It’s remarkable.”


And it’s the kind of reward that these senior citizen volunteers had hoped for: making a difference

in their part of the world.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

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