Ah, summer days!  While many things slow down around the College in the summer, the facilities management and campus renewal teams have plenty to keep busy with in terms of refreshing spaces and renovating offices.  In order to clear space for these improvements to happen you might be asked to clean out your desk, lab, classroom or shared work area.  And what should you do with that file cabinet full of meeting notes from 2001?  Or the shelf full of books that were there and haven’t been looked at since you got hired?  How about that jacket that belonged to Bob…but didn’t Bob retire, like, 5 years ago?

Well, fear not.  The recycling team can help you out.  If you’ve got an office cleanout, purge or renovation coming up, contact the Sustainability office, and we can arrange to have the Recycling Team deliver a variety of re-use and recycling bins for all of the items you want to clear out.  We can bring you:

• Bins for electronic items that still work that can be donated or given away
• E-waste bins for broken electronics that will be dismantled and recycled
• Confidential Shredding bins for private documents that need to be destroyed
• Paper recycling bins for paper, cardboard & boxboard
• Plastic, glass, & metal recycling bins for mixed recyclables
• Book recycling bins for textbooks and softcover books that are irrelevant
• Community Donation Bins for still-useful items such as small office supplies, books that someone might still want, clothing items, etc which will either be donated to a thrift store, or placed on one of our College’s Free Shelves

The College has a Free Shelf?!

Perhaps you’ve noticed the pair of shelves outside room B105 at NDC.  They’re often laden with empty binders, file folders, keyboards, pens, pencils and markers that are free for the taking.  The Sustainability Office stocks this shelf with items diverted from the trash in office cleanouts and renovations.  We encourage staff and students to take whatever items they find on said shelves for their own personal use.  Said items are often lightly used and are of too little value for the college to re-sell, but definitely worth keeping out of the trash! 

There’s a similar table in the Roblin Building at EDC out front of the student association offices which is often used similarly for giving away small surplus items.  And up on the 7^th floor lounge of PGI residence there’s a cabinet for students living in residence to exchange small household items that they’re no longer using.