From the Sierra Club to the Princeton Review, bouquets for BU’s environmental efforts are blossoming like spring crocuses. The latest is an award for a partnership with Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries that recycled 35 tons of clothing and housewares last May.

The Goodwill Not Landfill program won a third-place Excellence Award from NASPA (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education), an advocacy and development group of administrators from 1,400 campuses worldwide. The six-year-old awards, which recognize innovative services in various areas of student administration, drew 205 nominations this year, says NASPA spokeswoman Kaaryn Sanon.

University sustainability director Dennis Carlberg hopes to run the Goodwill collection program at the end of every semester. (A collection at the end of the fall semester garnered more than three tons of goods, he says.) A list of the items that will be accepted at the end of this semester is here.

“This is the first time that BU’s received an award from that organization,” Carlberg says. “It shows we’re being effective.” He’s not kidding: the 35 tons recycled during last May’s Move Out of students leaving campus for the summer was five times the amount recycled during the 2009 Move Out.

The Goodwill Not Landfill program is the most formal partnership that Goodwill has with a school, says the nonprofit’s spokesman James Harder, although there have been sporadic pickups on other campuses.

Goodwill, founded in 1895 in Boston by Methodist minister Edgar Helms (STH 1893, Hon.’40), provides job training and other services to those facing barriers to employment and runs a network of thrift stores. Under the Goodwill Not Landfill initiative, the University and Goodwill have placed collection bins in dorms and in the George Sherman Union and encourage students, faculty, and staff to deposit unwanted clothing and housewares there.

The award caps a string of honors for BU’s environmental efforts, since President Robert A. Brown launched the Boston University Sustainability Committee in 2008.

The Sierra Club last year put BU on its fourth annual list of “coolest schools” for sustainability initiatives. Last year’s Princeton Review Guide to 286 Green Colleges cited the University as well. And on the latest College Sustainability Report Card, issued by the Sustainable Endowments Institute and surveying 300 campuses, BU earned a B, its highest grade ever. The report card cited the University’s efforts to cut its greenhouse gas emissions and the fact that it has several staff, including Carlberg, devoted to sustainability measures.

BU has also been cited by the Massachusetts utilities group Mass Save for its energy-efficiency program and by the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange for its sustainability website.

This article first appeared in BU Today on February 17, 2011.  Rich Barlow can be reached at barlowr@bu.edu.

Last May, the Big Brother Big Sister Foundation collected almost seven tons of clothing and shoes donated by students; sale of the donations funded programs for local children. Photo by Dennis Carlberg

Imagine receiving a care package with seven tons of goodies.

That’s what BU’s dorm residents gave at the end of the last school year to the Big Brother Big Sister Foundation, which then sold the donated shirts, shoes, and pants, siphoning the proceeds into the organization’s local programs.

“You look at the piles at the end of the year and it’s just phenomenal what people throw away,” says Dennis Carlberg, the University’s sustainability director, whose mantra is reduce, reuse, recycle. “If we can give it to someone to reuse, that’s a lot better than recycling it or putting it in the trash.”

Boston University teamed up with the Big Brother Big Sister Foundation for the first time last May, joining several Boston-area universities, including Wellesley College, Boston College, and Emerson University, in encouraging students to donate clothing and shoes.

Ken Higgins, the foundation’s dispatch supervisor, says students share a willingness to help local children and protect the environment. “The BU kids got a whiff of it and really accepted it,” Higgins says.

After years of seeing clothing fill dumpsters, Michael Lyons, senior buyer for Facilities Management and Planning, got more than upset — he got proactive. He met with Residence Life staffers to discuss how the material, fine to wear if no longer in fashion, could be rescued and reused.

Lyons and his team looked into several nonprofit organizations before deciding to go with the Big Brother Big Sister Foundation, whose blue trucks pick up donations for free.

Goodwill Industries International, founded by Rev. Edgar J. Helms (STH 1893, Hon.’40), was another possibility, but lost out because it does not pick up donated items.

Coordinating the effort in one week posed the biggest challenge. Carlberg’s office provided signs for drop-off locations at most residence halls, and resident assistants spread the word. Foundation trucks made a campus sweep every other day from May 4 through 19 to collect donated items.

On short notice, 6.75 tons of goods isn’t a bad snag. “Overall, it was very successful, and you learn as you go,” Carlberg says.

Those same items would most likely have been incinerated as trash. The University annually pays Waste Management almost $1 million for garbage collection and removal. The disposal cost of those tons of clothing and shoes would been less than $500, Lyons says, but pinching pennies isn’t the point.

“I think the real key is that the material got to a needy organization,” he says.

Donated clothing and shoes are brought to the foundation’s 25,000-square-foot warehouse in Holbrook, where they are boxed and sent by tractor-trailers throughout the United States and Canada to large thrift store chains such as Savers.

The Big Brother Big Sister Foundation is paid per pound of goods sold. Suddenly what would have been trash is transformed into cash. All told, the organization netted $4,000 to $5,000, according to executive director Steve Beck. “That’s one of the cool things we do,” he says. “We don’t ask you for money; we ask you for your shoes and clothing.”

That money pays the foundation’s operational costs and funnels back to programs that help provide adult mentors for more than 5,000 children throughout greater Boston.

Beck would love to see the program spread to every regional college. Next year, the foundation plans to launch a spring break jeans drive; every student who donates a pair will be entered into a raffle for a free trip. Carlberg is not yet sure of the destination, but he’s thinking Cozumel or Cancún.

As for BU, Carlberg wants to repeat the clothing round-up at the end of this school year. “This is something we feel we really need to do,” he says.

Clothes may be what’s left behind as students move out, but Carlberg knows where he wants to focus for the next Move-in weekend: recycling cardboard.

Leslie Friday can be reached at lfriday@bu.edu.

This year sustainability@BU and Goodwill partnered for Move Out 2010, diverting  35.24 tons of clothing and household items from landfills. Read More

Last year BU diverted 6.75 tons of reusable items. This year we captured more than 5 times as last year, diverting  35.24 tons of clothing and household items from landfills.

Pick-ups began on April 26th, and continued through May 18th, giving your old stuff new life. Check out the complete list of things to bring to the bins next year, things not to bring, and area locations.

Supporting Lifelong Sustainability

Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries strives to provide exemplary job training and related services to help individuals with special needs and other barriers to self-sufficiency; to achieve independence and dignity through work. Not charity, but a chance.

Since BU Graduate Rev. Edgar Helms founded Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries in 1895 in Boston’s South End, he called what he was creating work as a way for people to lift themselves from poverty.

“The way out of poverty is productive work. People deserve to be able to work. People need a chance, not charity,” Rev. Helms said.

Rev. Helms conceived the idea of collecting unwanted household goods and employing impoverished immigrants to refurbish the goods for resale. The work provided local residents with jobs while the sale of goods provided low-cost items for the community and paid the workers’ wages.

The system proved a success, and Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries became the first in what is today a worldwide network of 166 organizations in the United States and Canada and 16 affiliated organizations in 14 countries that has helped more than seven million people facing barriers to employment. They have also become one of the region’s first successful social enterprise models.

Over the years, the range of Goodwill’s work has broadened significantly. Today, they serve individuals who face a variety of barriers to self-sufficiency such as physical, intellectual and developmental challenges; homelessness; limited education and job skills, and welfare dependency. Through training and work programs, career services, youth outreach, and retail and other social enterprises, Goodwill helps to equip individuals with the tools necessary to meet new challenges and create more rewarding and independent lives. Goodwill is one of the largest employers of people with disabilities in New England.  Each year Goodwill serves more than 7,200 low-income, unemployed, and underemployed adults through job training and career services programs and more than 1,000 young people in its youth services programs.

Goodwill is a major employer of individuals with disabilities in the social enterprises in which it operates, such as retail, housekeeping, maintenance, food service and light assembly. It is also a non-profit, tax-exempt organization with a staff of 296 and an operating budget of more than $28 million.

If you’re looking for some new clothes or to furnish your apartment, Goodwill has a great selection of clothing and household goods at very reasonable prices at their numerous Goodwill Stores.