Clients: Katie Barta, Jim Dontje, Ashley Hansen

By: Jared Bertsch, Garrett Fuchs, Taylor Meurer, Tamara Meuwissen, Keri Pickel, and Caitlin Whitney

Acknowledgments

We would like to specially thank these individuals for their time and dedication that made this possible:

Katie Barta for her constant presence of leadership and commitment throughout this semester.Ashley Hansen for her enthusiasm and overall support.

Jim Dontje for his financial backing and belief in the Gustavus Garage SaleKathi Tunheim for her mentoring guidance and the overall shared academic knowledge we

received from her.

Additionally we would like to thank the following people for taking the time to make our research possible.

Andrea Hoerner- Penn State HarrisburgAl Matysovsky – Penn StateFrank Parker- Notre Dame

Emily Worthington- University of TexasGustavus Survey Participants

Without each of you, this project would not have been possible. Your cooperation and participation were greatly appreciated.

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary 4

Introduction 5

Purpose 6

Review of Literature 7Global Issues 7Recycling Revolution 8Recycling Within Educational Institutions 10

Methodology: Design, Methods, Participants 13

Research Findings 15Penn State Harrisburg 15University of Texas 17Notre Dame 18Penn State 19Survey Findings 21

Research Limitations 22

Recommendations for Practice 23

Recommendation for Future Research 26

Conclusion 27

Survey Questions 28

Survey Results 29

Billable Hours 32

Transcripts 38Penn State 38Penn State Harrisburg 42Notre Dame 44University of Texas 47

References 49

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Executive Summary

The purpose of this document is to provide the Gustavus Garage Sale founders with our findings

from our research to assist in their objective to implement a sustainable and successful Gustavus

Garage Sale. We sent out a survey to the Gustavus student body via SurveyMonkey.com and

interviewed four different colleges who already have an established on-campus garage sale.

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Introduction

Colleges and schools around the country are beginning to take the forefront stance on recycling.

Here at Gustavus Adolphus College, the environmental studies department is one of the twenty-

four departments offered. This department strives to “combine rigorous empiricism with analysis

of ethical, aesthetic, and historical issues in examining the relationship between humans and the

nonhuman world”.

One student who took this course during her senior year at Gustavus is Katie Barta. Katie is a

senior student from Burnsville, Minnesota, who is a double major in Environmental Studies and

Biology. One of the courses required by the Environmental Studies department is Senior

Seminar. This course requires students to investigate many environmental issues, with their

research ultimately resulting in a final project. Katie was inspired by a newspaper article on the

amount of waste produced by the University of Minnesota. Her research throughout the course

targeted limiting the amount of trash that is sent to landfills caused by students moving back

home for the summer months. In her research, she found that the best way to reduce waste was to

organize and implement a college sponsored garage sale much like that of Carleton College. This

sale will be made possible by collecting donations from not only the students of Gustavus but

also the community of Saint Peter.

Dr. Jim Dontje is the Director of Johnson Center for Environmental Innovation, which heads the

environmental sustainability efforts on the campus of Gustavus. Jim is also a professor for the

environmental studies department. Jim was initially involved with a Bike Repair Initiative that

was exploring ways to recycle and reuse bicycles. He then became involved with the Gustavus

Garage Sale through common interests with Katie Barta’s program.

Ashley Hansen is another Environment Studies major on campus. In fact, Ashley is the

Environmental Studies student worker and became involved through her work. Over the last

year, she and Katie have worked side by side on the Gustavus Garage Sale project.

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Purpose

The purpose of our consulting project was to help develop and organize an event that we hope to

have annually here on campus. Our goal was to help create new ideas on how we can help

increase the rate of recycling on campus such as accessibility, awareness, and community wide

involvement. We also had a crucial role in helping with the organizing and marketing portions of

the event.

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Review of Literature

There is a continual increase in detrimental factors facing our environment. In today’s world it is

no secret that we have many issues with carbon emissions, waste management and the utilization

of natural resources. These factors affect everyone in the world, whether you are causing them or

trying to prevent them. As a whole, our society has tried to figure out different ways in which we

can try to exclude or at least minimize the effects these have on our planet. So far our efforts

have come up short in preventing climate change but every effort helps. The goal of this review

will be to explain the overall issue of wasteful actions by students on a college campus. It will

focus on the overall issue of waste and global issues that are facing our environment, practices to

reduce pollution, specifically the role recycling plays on the environment. Lastly, focus on the

other college campuses around the nation that are taking action to divert this waste from

occurring through many different recycling processes.

Global Issues

Currently the worlds’ most pressing issues are global warming and environmental change. The

poor technology choices of today’s generation are creating an environmental decline (Goodstein,

2012, p.1032). Our use of natural resources, such as burning fossil fuels, is a great factor in the

decline of our environment. Burning fossil fuels is causing the issue widely known of global

warming. Global warming is the increase in the earth’s average atmospheric temperature that

causes many changes in the climate of the world. This change in climate is commonly caused by

a factor called the greenhouse effect. This phenomenon is a difficult process to understand, but in

simplistic terms, global warming is the heating of the atmosphere. This increase in heat is caused

by solar radiation that comes into the atmosphere. Due to the absorption of carbon dioxide, water

vapor, methane and other gases that are emitted by humans, the excess heat is trapped in our

atmosphere. The fact that this radiation cannot exit the atmosphere results in a warming effect on

earth (Goodstein, 2012, p.1032).

It is estimated that the human population has already burned 2 trillion metric tons of carbon

dioxide, which is only about one percent of the carbon that is available in our soils. Research

shows that if humans continue to use fossil fuels at the current rate, the earth could warm up nine

degrees Fahrenheit in the next 100 years (Caldeira, 2011). The increase in carbon and methane

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emissions is greatly correlated to the destruction of our environment. These changes are seen

with fluctuations in melting ice, killing forests, causing floods, and producing intense heat waves

that cause droughts and desertification throughout the world.

Most of the choices that humans make when it comes to using fossil fuels are difficult habits to

break and the destruction we cause can be irreversible. Nations and International agencies have

raised many different theories to identify ways to clean our environment through new

technologies that are cheap and easy for all to use. The push to increase recycling habits is the

most popular trend in our generation to improve the environment and potentially reduce the

effects of global warming.

Recycling Revolution

The history of recycling

While recycling itself dates back centuries, recycling on the national and global scales have a

more recent effect on our earth. The first mass recycling movement took place during World War

II. Due to war time needs, national campaigns called for the reuse of metal, rubber, paper, and

even certain foods (Source). During the war, Chicago school children collected 36 million

pounds of old paper in 5 months; that equals to 65 pounds per child (Styles, A). At this point in

time, the duty of recycling was seen as a patriotic duty versus something to save the

environment. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that a large push was made to preserve the environment

and to conserve our resources. Today, the United States recycles at a rate of 34 percent (Pearson,

2011). The push to recycle has continued to grow over the last 50 years due to our growing

knowledge of climate change. In particular, environmentalists made recycling one of the great

success stories of the 90’s. Just 16 years ago, only 10 percent of waste in California was being

diverted from landfills; today the state has achieved a diversion rate of over 50 percent (Brown,

2007). The most recent 1999 Environmental Protection Agency report puts the national recycling

rate at 28 percent, which is up from just 6.6 percent in 1970 (Motavalli, 2000).

Current national and global recycling focuses

Generally speaking, the national and globalized plans to recycle reusable materials can be broken

all the way down to city and community efforts. These tactics follow a distinct hierarchy; the

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first step is recycling within each household, then community recycling strategies, followed by

county and state efforts, and finally national and international recycling endeavors. One of the

leading states on recycling is California. Each year, California’s diversion and recycling efforts

save enough energy to power nearly 1.5 million homes (Brown, 2007). Other national scale

recycling policies have occurred in places like Germany. “The Producer Pays” resource

management law enacted in 1997 makes producers accountable for their packaging material for

products and the reuse of that material (Motavalli, 2000). We are seeing many policies like this

around the globe that tax businesses based on pollution and resource management. Countries like

the Netherlands have since copied laws made to control resource management much like the

Producer Pays law in Germany (Motavalli, 2000).

Helping to lead the recycling charge in many ways is the United States. The United States

created 243 million tons of municipal solid waste during the year 2009. This breaks down to 4.3

pounds of waste per person, per day. Of that 243 million tons, 82 million tons of the waste was

recycled. This accounts for 1.5 pounds per person, per day. Unfortunately, there is not a

unanimous worldwide recycling program. This leads to vast differences between countries’

recycling strategies. Developed nations typically generate more waste, but have more formal,

structured recycling programs in place. Members of developing nations tend to generate less

waste and practice “informal” recycling and reuse initiatives (Pearson, 2011).

Why people do and do not recycle

There are many factors that determine a persons’ contribution and participation in recycling.

However, the two leading variables that have direct correlation to participation in recycling are

knowledge and convenience. According to a study performed by Pearson and Dawson,

knowledge and convenience exhibited a positive relationship with recycling behavior.

Convenience still proves to be the largest factor and has been found time and time again that

people will not participate in recycling programs if their participation is not made easy. Much in

the same way, the two leading variables identified as barriers to recycling were lack of

knowledge and inconvenience (Pearson, 2011). One of the major costs of most successful

recycling programs is transportation of material to make participation convenient. For example; a

curbside recycling plan in Philadelphia was costing $1,200 per ton of waste in 1992. Since then

the program has become more efficient running at $750 per ton of waste (Farrell, 1997). There is

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also a great deal of economic and financial incentives to recycling. The most profitable

recyclable composite, aluminum, takes 95 percent less energy to reproduce, with 95 percent

fewer emission. Profit margins for recycled aluminum are extremely high. Especially when you

factor in that the typical monetary rate for aluminum cans production is at around $1,600 per ton

(Yepsen, 2007).

Short comings of recycling

There have certainly been many great recycling successes in the country, but even a state like

California who is diverting 52 percent of the 88 million tons of waste generated each year, still

has a remaining 42 million tons of waste that goes to landfills each year (Brown, 2007).

Although aluminum is a high profit yielding composite, it makes up only 1.5 percent of the

single stream composites. Glass, which has a negative reuse market value, makes up 23 percent

of the single stream composites (Yepsen, 2007). Recycling improvements will only be made if

further efforts are made to help recycling be more efficient.

Recycling within educational institutions

Universities and colleges take the lead

Our environment comes face to face with global challenges every day. Our communities are

aware of the complications of global climate change, non-point source pollution, and waste

management problems create. Unfortunately these problems will continue to induce negative

externalities and have adverse affects on our environment if a solution is not found.

Beginning in 1972, with the Stockholm Declaration, institutions of higher education have

attempted to become more sustainable and some have entered into international environmental

sustainability agreements. Because of their large size, population and the various complex

activities taking place in their campuses, universities can nowadays be classified as “small

cities”. Due to their engagement in scientific, social and educational events that include

considerable material consumption and energy usage, campuses around the world have taken a

forefront stance to address direct and indirect impacts on the environment. Colleges and

universities are well suited to take the lead on environmental protection and sustainability

practices (Kaplowitz, 2009, Alshowaikhat, 2008).

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What, where, why, how to recycle.

It is one thing to implement a short term recycling program for college campus but to

institutionalize a long term recycling program can be difficult. According to researcher,

Ecodemia J. Keniry, colleges and universities with the most successful programs share the

following 11 characteristics: (1) positive executive support, (2) written environment policies, (3)

provision of resources and incentives, (4) creation of a framework for planning, (5) incorporation

of environmental responsibility into the curriculum, (6) environmental research activities, (8)

measurable reductions of costs and wastes, (9) good public relations and documentation, (10)

financial accountability and (11) provision of leadership development.

Recent evidence suggests individuals’ participation in recycling programs is in direct correlation

with their knowledge of how, where and what to recycle including their knowledge of how

recycling benefits the environment (Kaplowitz, 2009). Efforts to improve the knowledge of

target populations can be difficult compared to improving convenience and providing better

opportunities. The challenging part is only a few studies have focused on strategies to improve

the general awareness of campus residents about recycling and even fewer studies have used

inputs from the target audience to do so (Kaplowitz, 2009).

Higher institutions in action

When the school year comes to an end, college and university campus dumpsters start piling up

with futons, chairs, end tables, lamps, clothes, shoes, and everything the students do not want to

bring home goes into the dumpsters. Unfortunately, everything in the dumpsters eventually ends

up in a landfill. A vast majority of the items going into the dumpsters are still in good condition

and can still be reused. To help prevent these large amounts of waste from entering the landfills,

some colleges and universities have started hosting on-campus annual and bi-annual yard sales.

These colleges accept donations at the end of each school year from students and faculty to

reduce the amount of goods that are discarded as waste into the landfills. The collected items are

in turn sold in the yard sale, where community members can purchase the items.

Penn State was one of the first universities to implement the yard sale, whose program is now

named Trash to Treasure. Trash to Treasure has gained a lot of recognition over the years due to

their continual success. Each year Penn State students alone average 190 tons of move-out waste

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that would otherwise go straight into the landfill. By implementing the yard sale, Trash to

Treasure is able to collect an average of 60 tons per year from the students, greatly reducing the

amount of waste. For their sale, Penn State accepts non-perishable foods, clothing, furniture,

carpets, electronics, appliances, and the list goes on and on.

They are not only reducing the amount of waste that is going to the landfill, but they are also

benefiting their community. The sale is held during the month of June and it provides an

opportunity for community members to purchase items at a low cost. Approximately $50,000 is

raised per year and all proceeds from the Trash to Treasure sale goes to the Centre County

United Way and its member organizations (Trash to Treasure, 2008).

In 2005, students at Saint Lawrence University teamed up with community organizations to

create a Reuse Program. The Reuse Initiative started very small, with a single fall sale, storing

their items in a trailer. Again, the program began to grow and expand. The Initiative became so

popular it moved from the trailer to the basement of a residential hall. Starting in 2008 the Reuse

Initiative transitioned into a year round student run campus thrift store, which took on the name

the Barn Good Thrift Store. Most other college garage sales donate their money to local

organizations but the Barn Good Thrift Store uses their money to pay salaries, advertising costs

and other operating expenses (Barn Good Thrift Store, 2011).

Penn State and Saint Lawrence are not the only colleges that have created a yard sale event.

Their success has sparked the interest of many other colleges and universities nationwide that are

participating in the fight to reduce campus waste.

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Methodology

Research Design

Our primary focus was to determine the methods previously used to market and manage

successful college garage sale events. Over the last 15 years, college garage sales have become a

popular fundraiser event on campuses around the country. In order to make our program

successful, we wanted to find common practices among these programs. Also, the main objective

in reaching out to our student body is to determine individual recycling habits on campus and to

find what procedures would invoke participation in our event.

Research Methods

To collect data from these institutions, our group unanimously decided that the best methodology

practice for collecting data would be phone interviews with these schools. During the week of

April 8th-April 12th, we conducted four phone interviews. The schools that were selected were

chosen predominately due to their previous success in creating a Trash to Treasure type

fundraiser. Prior to conducting our interviews, we gave the key individuals a list of potential

questions that would be asked. At the beginning of each interview, we let each of our

interviewees know that we would be recording our conversations so we could refer back to the

information later. During the interview we used an interactive format versus a structured

question and answer system. Conversation flowed more freely and was not necessarily guided

by segmented questions. Following the conversations, we grouped major themes together that

each school had in common. These categories included: pricing, volunteers, marketing strategies,

donation collection, and event proceedings. We then used this information to relate our findings

to our own campus and resources available to us.

Through our survey we hoped to acquire knowledge about common recycling habits within our

student body. Our survey questions were directed to determine two main points. The first point

was to determine if each student practiced recycling and if so how much do they recycle.

Secondly, we hoped to find what students predominately do with their unwanted items at the end

of the year. The process for creating our survey first entailed composing a list of twenty key

questions. We then narrowed the list down to ten questions so we could better focus our main

objectives. Of our ten questions, eight were research based and the last two focused on sorting

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our research questions into demographics. The two demographic questions we felt were most

important and applicable to our project were the gender and intended graduation year of the

student. Furthermore, we divided our list of eight research based questions into four open ended,

free response questions and four close ended questions. Prior to administering the survey, the

participants were given no background knowledge or information on our Gustavus Garage Sale

event so as not to bias their responses in any way.

Research Participants

For our phone interviews we interviewed four different colleges. These offered a great sample

because the four programs differed immensely in the scale and magnitude of their sale event. For

our survey sample size, we sent a campus wide student survey to all departments and class years.

Students ages ranged from 18 to 24 and had no bias based on campus residency.

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Research Findings

Through our research, we found many key strategies and information about how other colleges

have established and coordinated successful garage sale events. The schools which we spoke

with include Penn State, Penn State Harrisburg, Notre Dame, and University of Texas at Austin.

These schools all demonstrate the many different practices among campuses. The survey we sent

to our student body also gave a great indicator as to the recycling practices on our campus here at

Gustavus. In this findings report, we will discuss each school and further dissect the marketing,

item pricing, donation collection process, obtaining volunteers, and event operations of these

schools. We will then speak on the findings of our student survey by discussing common

practices at Gustavus, why people do and do not recycle, and ways to encourage recycling.

Penn State Harrisburg- Andrea Hoerner

Marketing: What Penn State Harrisburg’s Trash to Treasure program finds most effective to

market their cause to the student body by sending out a mass email. The emails are sent the week

before finals and the week of finals letting the students know what, when, and where to donate

items. They also put up posters by most of the trash cans on campus that say, “STOP, think can

this be donated?” Flyers are also handed out to each of the dorms stating what items to donate

and where to drop off the items. Andrea then explained the way their Trash to Treasure program

advertises to the community is by advertising in their local newspaper. She explained their

newspaper has a “yard sale” section on Facebook in which they are allowed to make postings

about their event as well as post advertisements in the actual circulated paper. One of their most

successful marketing strategies came from making extra-large cardboard signs advertising the

yard sale event. They post these signs at the entrance of their school for passer buyers to see. She

stated that many people commented that they came just because they saw the cardboard signs on

the day of the event.

Price items: Andrea told us that their school did not have a specific pricing system but tried to

price their items like a normal garage sale where the price depends on the condition of the item.

They even allow negotiation of the price on the day of the sale but she noted that most people

pay the listing price, especially when they know the profits are going to charity. They try not to

spend too much time sorting and pricing items so they often group like items and price them all

15

the same. Andrea’s example was a box of jewelry and they will list that every piece of jewelry is

$2 instead of pricing each item. The highest she could remember pricing an item was $50. The

item was an antique that they had an antique specialist take a look at to determine the price. One

thing our group found note worthy is that two years ago their area was hit with a major flood and

a lot of families lost many of their possessions. Knowing that families were looking for

children’s clothes they priced all of their clothes at just $0.25 to help the community as best as

they could.

Donation Collection: The only point of note for Penn State Harrisburg’s donation collection

process is that they have donation bins located strategically throughout campus. These donation

bins are put in centralized locations where faculty and students can easily access them and

donate their items. This past year was the first year that they have accepted donations from the

community but still did not advertise to anyone other than the student body that they take

donations.

Obtaining Volunteers: Andrea said they only use a core group of ten people to pre-plan the event

as well as, run the operation on the day of the event. She noted that it doesn’t take as many

people to run the event as it does to set up and clean up after the event. This year they are getting

sports teams involved to help as their major volunteer group. She uses student athletes because

she works in the athletic department. Andrea emphasized that you want to lock the volunteers

down to the date and times they signed up for and have as many volunteers as you can for clean

up.

Event Operation: The way in which they set up their cashier is that they only have one cash

register and check out area for all customers. They have several other volunteers there to help

run sections of the sale and to help if customers want to negotiate prices. If a customer does

negotiate a price, they are given a signed slip by one of the volunteers with the new price to take

with them to the checkout area. Andrea recommended holding the event inside so there are no

weather complications. When the event is over, the Salvation Army comes through to pick any

remaining donations.

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University of Texas- Emily Worthington

Marketing: The number one tool that the University of Texas’ garage sale uses to advertise is a

program called KRRB. KRRB is an online website that functions somewhat like Craigslist. You

can set up a “corner” and post items to be advertised or sold. The University of Texas takes

relatively 300 pictures of items donated to their garage sale and posts these pictures on their

KRRB corner solely for advertisement. They then give out flyers that tell customers to get a

sneak peak of their event items online with the URL to their KRRB account listed. Emily stated

that they will not sell anything online because they want people to attend their event. The

university also uses the Facebook events app to advertise when and where the sale is taking

place. Each year there is an article in the schools newspaper, The Daily Texan. In the past, they

have also done local news streams too. Emily also noted that because their event is a few years

old, they do not have to advertise nearly as much because their event is generally known.

Price items: The University of Texas uses a unique pricing system where everything is only $1.

No matter what the item is, they will only sell it for maximum of $1. Emily’s reasoning for this

is because people tend to buy a lot more and be less picky because of the low price.

Donation Collection: For their donation collection process, the University of Texas places

collection bins in the residential buildings and other centrally located places. Emily stated that it

works best when you put bins in easily accommodating and accessible places for the students.

Volunteers: There are a total of 30 volunteers that work different shifts throughout the sale.

Emily expressed concern that they often have issues getting enough volunteers on the day of the

event. The different shifts that the volunteers participate in include; managing money, people

bagging the items, and having people walking around to answer questions and to monitor

stealing.

Operations: The University of Texas only takes donations from the students and faculty. They

do not take donations from the community because they do not have the storage space nor the

man power to accommodate all of the items that would be presented. They also have Goodwill,

come in after their sale to pick over items that can be reused a taken to their store.

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Notre Dame- Frank Parker

Marketing: Notre Dame uses many available routes to market their event. Like many of the other

schools, they send out flyers to the students and use table tents in their cafeteria for the students

to see. However, Notre Dame uses other avenues as well. There are two television stations that

broadcast their event on the day of the sale. They have also done promotional advertising on the

radio as well as advertising on billboards. Frank also spoke to the fact that their Old to Gold

program works closely with Notre Dame’s Residential Life and the Sustainability Office to help

market the event to students.

Pricing: Frank emphasized the term “price to sell” because you do not want anything left over

afterward. Their Old to Gold program decided to have an absolute maximum price of $50 which

is typically for televisions and other electronics. Standard furniture prices typically range

between $5 and $10. Nice futons are sold for $20 as well as good conditioned couches. A normal

coffee table can be priced between $1 and $5. Frank explained that all clothing is under $5.

Typically, the Old to Gold event receives between 300-400 bikes that are donated each year and

sold for $5-$30. Due to the low prices placed on these bikes, they are all gone within 45 minutes.

Notre Dame is also the only program that practices an early bird sale from 7:00-9:00am where

items are further discounted for those who come early.

Donation Collection: One of the unique ways in which Notre Dame collects its donations is that

their maintenance employees are paid to travel around campus and pick items up from students

and donation bin locations. They have even parked their maintenance trucks outside of

residential buildings at night, so students would be able to drop off their items into the truck. The

maintenance worker would then just need to drive the truck away in the morning. Donation

collection bins are located in designated areas placed strategically through campus as well.

Volunteers: Due to the magnitude and scale of their event, Frank stated that they need 120-150

volunteers to run the sale event. They tap into outside volunteer sources as well as use faculty

and administration employees from different departments to help with the event. Notre Dame

requires that each volunteer be cleared and approved through the school before they can help.

Operations: Frank was adamant pertaining to not letting volunteers shop at all. He told several

stories where volunteers and customers got into troubling situations. It is best to have strict rules

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against allowing volunteers to shop at the event to avoid problematic circumstances. The sale is

held outside in June in the Notre Dame football stadium and is set up in a unique fashion. Notre

Dame has a segmented pod setup where customers filter through and pick up items that they

want out of the pod. As they are leaving volunteers put all of the products in a large trash bag,

value the items, seal the bag, and write the price on the outside. They then move to the next pod.

There is one centralized cashier station at the exit of the stadium where all the bags are totaled

up. There are certain pods with furniture where they have roaming cashiers with money bags.

The customer can purchase the item and take it out once they purchase it so it doesn’t have to be

carried around.

Penn State- Al Matysovsky

Marketing: Penn State asks their students to put tables in their common area. Students table in

these areas to request other students to please donate their unwanted goods that have quality.

This would include clothing, bicycles they no longer wanted, or old computers. During that first

year they had two TV stations and three radio stations walking around doing interviews. Penn

State started with a marketing group that came up with some slogans. For example, it would say

Trash to Treasure: give it up for good. And for good is in italics, so when you look at it, creates a

notable brand. They put the posters up in the dorms, it had a little description of what they were

trying to achieve. Also, they used the local newspaper to come in every year and take pictures

and talk about the sale and presale type things. The newspaper also took pictures of items that

would be at the sale to give people an idea of what would be there.

Pricing: Penn State sets a maximum price on items of $20. No matter how nice the item is, they

will not sell it for a penny more. Al explained that in selling items at low prices but high

quantity, they have still raised $556,000 in 11 years for the United Way. The other thing that you

should not do is lower prices the longer the sale goes on. They did that for two years and

advertised a bag sale at 1:00pm. People came at five in the morning and waited for the gates to

open, went in and took all of their better donation items, put them in their bags and sat there from

7:30 until 1:00 so they could buy a bag for $10. One thing that you don’t want to do is hold items

for people. Make the customers purchase it.

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Donation Collection: The College asks students to donate goods in certain locations that are

labeled around campus. They do this because they were told by their lawyers, if they didn’t label

the bins, someone could come back saying, “My Rolex is missing, you took it, you sold it, and I

want the value of the Rolex.” They could potentially end up with a lot of lawsuits from the

students unless the bins were to say, “This is a Trash to Treasure donation area; all materials

belong to the United Way once it is placed in this bin.” Then they can defend that in the court of

law should they be sued, so that’s what they do. From freshmen all the way to the seniors they

collect materials in all of their residence halls. The college’s average tons per year donated is 65.

Al had labor crew people who would go around and pick up the goods in the donation areas.

Volunteers: The College has volunteers on sale day that help to load the items; they have shirts

that say Trash to Treasure on them that makes them identifiable. We also have mug shots for

people that are allowed to touch money because when people are paying for items they want to

make sure that the person is legitimate.

Operations: For their first year, they setup the sale in an old horse arena at Penn State and it had

250-300 tables, they pulled out bleachers where they put the shoes and they stacked the tables

with donations. They worked around the clock for three days, 24/7 operations with three or four

hundred volunteers coming in on shifts. They bring in vendors and people who donated hotdogs

and were selling them outside the door, with all proceeds going to the United Way. If you go into

the Penn State sale the shirts are by size and gender. The ones that have buttons are hung up on

racks. With inadequate preplanning the first year, they threw all donations randomly on tables to

be sold. After the first year, they moved the event to Beaver Stadium, which holds 110,000

people. Beaver Stadium became partners with Trash to Treasure and the event has been held at

Beaver Stadium every year but one because of construction. When you walk in to Beaver

Stadium the day of the sale, there is a quarter of a mile of tables set up, they have a furniture area

staffed by someone, and they have people at varying stations along the way. They also have

checkout lines at both ends when you come in to the venue and when you go out of the venue,

they have prepay folks that will help you count and tag your items so all you have to do is hand

the tag to the cashier and you can pay by card, cash, or check. With prepay they say, “okay that

will be $25” and you go out with your goods so you don’t have to unload all your items, they use

the honor system. The sale happens in Beaver Stadium on June 1st. They also have relationships

20

with people at the end of the sale which include the Salvation Army, American Rescue workers,

and Goodwill.

Survey Findings

Why people do and do not recycle: These are the leading responses we received from our survey

that answered the question “Why people do and do not recycle?” The main reason students on

campus recycle is because they feel a moral obligation to recycle. We are all aware of the

growing environmental problems and pollution issues, so there is certainly a morality to the

action. The other leading reason is because students have become accustomed to recycling and

now recycle out of habit. Gustavus has done a fairly decent job of providing recycling bins

around campus and students have become familiar with using them.

The leading reasons why students do not recycle came in several responses. Students do not

recycle because it is a hassle. If I do not see a recycling bin, it is a hassle to go find one instead

of using the trash can that I see right in front of me. The second leading reason is that the

students are not sure or are unaware of which items are and are not recyclable. There is certainly

some confusion as to which items should be placed in the trash or recycling. Lastly, recycling is

an inconvenience. It may be somewhat time consuming for students to separate their garbage and

make sure all items are being recycled.

Ways to encourage recycling: Some responses we received stated solutions to make students

recycle more items included putting more recycling receptacle bins on campus. This will prevent

students from throwing away items because they do not see a recycling bin. Another notion

brought forth was that there should be an incentive to recycle. This may be in the form of some

sort of prize for students who recycle most on campus. Lastly, and ironically, several

recommendations were to host a school garage sale at the end of the year where students could

donate items.

Common practices, how people recycle now: When asked, the leading response of ways in which

they currently get rid of unwanted items is to throw the items away at the end of the year. Fewer

students said they try to donate items or pass the items on to someone else. The last response was

that students take the unwanted items home with them after school each year.

21

Research Limitations

In our generation there has been a huge push for recycling; many studies have been done to

improve waste management across the world. There is a plethora of information available about

recycling and our environment and the toll it is taking due to landfills and global warming. But

there has been very little research done that focuses on improving waste management on college

campuses and even fewer studies that emphasize general awareness of recycling amongst college

students. Due to the lack of written information, we had to get data directly from the source.

Penn State is the first school to hold an on-campus garage sale but they are not the only ones.

Since then many college and university campuses have joined the fight to improve waste

management within their communities. Unfortunately there has only been one school in the

Midwest who has held a successful on-campus garage sale. So we were not able to travel to have

face to face conversations with the other schools. As a result, we had to rely on an email

response from a contact at each of the schools. Our hope was to eventually have the contact at

each school commit to a phone interview. The phone interviews were a great addition to our

research. With the little time and resources we had we were very fortunate that the other

colleges and universities were willing to set aside time so quickly to help us gain further

information for our project.

While we were very lucky to be able to conduct interviews with the other campuses and received

a lot of valuable information from doing so. The demographics of the universities we

interviewed were very far from Gustavus. Gustavus is a very small school compared to Penn

State and Notre Dame, to be able to hold a sale that resembles theirs would take a lot of time,

money and man power which is something we do not have. Because we are working with an on-

campus organization there was very little funding available for us to use for advertising and

marketing besides posters and emails.

22

Recommendations for Practice

After conducting research, we determined that there were several practices we would highly

recommend and emphasize. We have chosen the top five recommendations and have further

dissected and elaborated on these practices. These are our recommendations;

Make Your Volunteers Distinguishable

It should be evident to the customers who are where your event volunteers are located. This will

help to avoid confusion on the day of the sale and will act as a safety precaution. Many of the

schools had t-shirts made for their volunteers; this made it easy to be able to tell whether

someone was allowed to handle your fundraising money or direct customers. Some of the other

schools had instances where people acted like volunteers to try and steal money or donations.

Make an Official Gustavus Garage Sale Logo

A logo should be created to help unify all of your advertisements on campus and to the

community. Many different advertisements were handed out as flyers, table tents, and posters but

none of them necessarily correlated with one another. For future years you will want to establish

a unified logo and appearance to all Gustavus Garage Sale advertisements. We feel this will help

students and community members identify and associate the advertisements with your event.

Set Up a Formal Gustavus Garage Sale Committee

Tasks amongst individuals working on the garage sale seem to be a bit cluttered and

unorganized. One opportunity for improvement would be to better structure communication and

organization. There is not enough communication between your team to clarify who is in charge

of what subdivisions of the event. By setting up a formal committee, you could all focus on one

individual sector of the sale. For example you could have the following positions on the

committee;

o Student Committee President

o Student Executive of Volunteers

o Student Executive of Student and on Campus Marketing

o Student Executive of Community Marketing

23

o Student Executive of Advertisement Design and Creation

o Student Executive of Donation Collection

o Student Executive of Donation Sorting and Categorizing

o Student Executive of Event Operations

Do Not Let Volunteers Shop at Your Event

When speaking with the other colleges, they were adamant about not letting their volunteers

shop. There are several key reasons why you would not want to let the volunteers shop.

From a marketing standpoint, it can ruin your sale if word gets out to your consumers that you

have let the volunteers shop. Naturally, customers will assume that the volunteers have had the

first opportunity to see and purchase the good and great buy items. This has the potential to

change the community’s perception of how good your event actually is. They may feel that it is

not worth attending your event because all of the good items have already been sold. Many of the

other colleges advertise key items and big bargain donations. If customers show up to buy these

items at the opening of your sale and the item is already gone, needless to say the customer will

be more than displeased that the advertised item is not for sale.

Frank Parker from Notre Dame explained that they had an event like this occur. He stated that

their Trash to Treasure Committee advertised that there were two brand new, unused, 40inch, flat

screen televisions for sale for $20 at their event. On the day of their event, there was an

extremely long line of people that had been waiting there since 3:00am. The first two people let

into their event ran straight to where the new televisions were and one of the TV’s was already

gone. Obviously the second person in line was irate and made a very big scene. Upon further

investigation, one of the volunteers pulled his/her volunteer shirt off the second they opened up

the doors to the event. The volunteer then ran to buy the first TV before the second customer

could. This is just one example of problems that have arisen from the issue. Some of the schools

have gone as far as to say that they make their volunteers sign a contract stating that they will not

participate in purchasing at the event. Now, with that being said, the schools noted that the

volunteers are allowed to take anything left over after the sale event was over.

24

Price Donation Items Very Low to be Sure That They Sell

Many of the other colleges practiced various pricing techniques but each of them reiterated that

you want to price your items very low. There are two aspects at which we want to focus our

efforts of the event. The first is we would like to prevent waste from ending up in the landfill.

The second point of emphasis is that the garage sale wants to raise a great amount of revenue for

the Saint Peter community. The second of those two points can be distracting. Although

fundraising is one of our main goals, try to keep in mind that it is secondary to keeping waste out

of landfills. Your garage sale is going to want to sell as many items as possible to accomplish the

ultimate goal of reducing waste. The obvious way in which to sell more items is to sell

everything cheap. The University of Texas for example, sells every single item for just $1. Emily

Worthington explained customers almost get in a buying frenzy because everything is so

inexpensive. Customers tend to buy much more and are far less picky about which items they do

and do not take. The University of Texas still makes an average of around $2,000 selling their

items this way and more importantly, they are accomplishing the objective to reduce waste.

Selling items at astonishing low prices can also act as a great marketing campaign for your future

events in years to come. Al Matysovsky gave an explanation to their pricing method at Penn

State. Al affirmed that Penn State sells their items for a maximum amount of $20. They have

been tested a time or two at how well they stick to that policy. Al elaborated stating that they sell

TV’s, computers, bikes, jewelry, furniture, and everything in between for $20 or less. He spoke

of an extremely thick and heavy 18KG necklace that they sold a few years ago for $20. At the

time they estimated the necklace to be worth $800-$1,000. Al went on to say that although it

may be hard in the short term to sell an item for so little, it is one of the best marketing

campaigns that you could ever ask for. A person who gets a deal such as an 18KG necklace for

just $20 will most likely be telling that story to every person he/she knows for years to come.

Customers will flock to your event if word gets out that deals of that magnitude can be found. Al

and Penn State have the credibility to support such comments due to the fact that they have 3,000

people waiting outside their event venue waiting to enter on the day of the sale.

25

Recommendation for Future Research

The data we collected through conducting interviews and surveys provided us with meaningful

insight. In speaking with other colleges and student, this has proven to be extremely useful as the

Gustavus Garage Sale is quickly approaching. Our student body also was given a survey to help

us understand their views on recycling.

Our first recommendation for future research is to attend a college garage sale event. We believe

that this will allow you to see how other colleges host their events from a customer’s point of

view. While at the event you will be able to see what is working and what you may want to

consider changing. You will be able to enhance the Gustavus Garage Sale with ideas that you

gain from attending.

Next, we would encourage you to conduct a focus group with a random sample of Gustavus

Adolphus students. At the focus group you will receive input from the students regarding why

they do and do not recycle, what Gustavus could do to make them more likely to recycle, if they

would be willing to donate their unwanted items, and what can Gustavus do to make recycling

and donating more convenient. The focus group will allow the students to voice their opinions

and feed off of each other’s responses, which will provide meaningful data. Gaining this

information will benefit the garage sale by understanding how to get more students involved and

aware of the sale.

Lastly, we believe that further research into the date of the event will be beneficial. Most college

campuses host their event during the summer months when their students are not on campus. It

would be beneficial to research whether or not profit and attendance of the event would rise if

the sale was during the spring while students are on campus versus the summer.

26

Conclusion

Our goal of this project was to help generate new ideas on how we can increase the rate of

recycling on the campus of Gustavus Adolphus College; with our focus being on accessibility,

awareness, and community and campus wide involvement. After meeting with our client, Katie

Barta, we began to create an outline for the semester highlighting our goals and resources for

research. We compiled a list of questions using Survey Monkey. The survey was sent out to

Gustavus students of all ages and majors in order to collect a larger demographic of responses.

We also interviewed four other colleges around the country who have already established a

sustainable on-campus garage sale. Our goal from these interviews was to gain helpful insight in

order to make our garage sale a success. Such as, what went well, what they would have done

differently, is there anything they wish they would have known when organizing their first

garage sale. We have described five different recommendations for future research and practice,

all of which we believe will greatly improve the success of your event. Throughout the work on

this project, we not only acquired marketing experience, we also had hands-on experience with

the behind-the-scenes organization and implementation of the garage sale on the Gustavus

Adolphus College campus.

27

Survey Questions

IRB Approval Number- 1213-0227

1. Do you recycle? yes / no / unsure

2. Why or why not?

3. How often do you recycle?a. Alwaysb. Most of the timec. About half the timed. Once in a whilee. Never

4. What would encourage you to recycle more?

5. Do you think that Gustavus is doing enough to encourage recycling? yes / no / unsure

6. What do you do with the items you don’t need after you move out of your dorm at the end of the school year (throw it out, sell it, give it away, leave it behind etc.)?

7. Would you consider donating your used materials?Yes / no / unsure

8. What efforts can Gustavus make to encourage more recycling of used materials?

9. What is your gender?a. Maleb. Female

10. What is your status at Gustavus?a. Freshmanb. Sophomorec. Juniord. Seniore. Other

28

Survey Results

1) Do you recycle?

Yes

No

Unsure

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

97

0

3

2) Why do you recycle or why not? (Top 4 responses)

A. Benefits the Environment and Saves ResourcesB. It is the Right Thing To DoC. It’s EasyD. It’s a Habit

3) How often do you recycle?

38%

54%

6% 2%

AlwaysMost of the TimeAbout Half the TimeOnce in a While

4) What would encourage you to recycle more? (Top three responses)

A. More accessibilityB. Clarity of what can and cannot be recycledC. I always recycle

29

5) Do you think Gustavus is doing enough to encourage recycling?

Yes

No

Unsure

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

31

45

24

6) What do you do with the items you don’t need after you move out of your dorm at the end of the school year?

39%

24%

24%

7%6%

Throw it OutDonateTake HomeSellN/A

7) Would you consider donating your used materials?

Yes

No

Unsure

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

85

5

10

30

8) What efforts can Gustavus make to encourage more recycling of used materials? (Top three response)

1. More accessibility of donation/recycle sites2. More information/knowledge/advertising to recycle3. Have a garage sale or similar donation event

9) What is your gender?

79%

21%

Male and Female Participants

FemaleMale

10) What is your status at Gustavus?

23%

22%

21%

34%

Participants Graduation Class

FreshmenSophomoresJuniorsSeniors

31

Billable Hours

Dates Hours Action Jared Bertsch

Week 1(3/5-3/9)

1 hr1hr1hr

Group Meeting to discuss Smart GoalsGroup Meeting with Client in Gustie DenResearch for Review of Lit

Week 2(3/10-3/16)

1hr1hr

Group Meeting with Client in Gustie DenGroup Meeting for Review of Lit

Week 3(3/17-3/23)

1hr1hr

Group Meeting with Client in Gustie DenGroup Meeting to Finalize Smart Goals

Week 4(3/24-3/30)

1hr2hrs

Group Meeting with Client in Gustie DenReview of Lit reconstruction

Week 5(3/31-4/6)

1hr2 hrs

Email exchanges with schools to finalizing dates and times of phone interviewsReview of Lit reconstruction

Week 6(4/7-4/13)

1hr4hr1hr

Group Meeting with client in Gustie DenPhone Interviews with Penn State, Penn State, Harrisburg, Notre Dame, Univ of TexasWriting thank you letters to send to each of the colleges we spoke with.

Week 7(4/14-4/20)

1hr.5 hr2hrs1hr

Group Meeting with client in Gustie DenEmail exchanges with Paul Peterson, Saint Peter High SchoolReview of Lit revisions with groupWriting Methodology first draft

Week 8(4/21-4/27)

1hr1hr.5 hr1hr.5 hr1hr

Made handout sheet for high school meetingMeeting with Saint Peter High School principal, Paul Peterson regarding volunteersEmailing and Calling Saint Peter Herald NewspaperCreating Flyers to hand out at Wellness FairGroup meeting and cutting out flyers for Wellness FairAttending Wellness Fair to help with booth

Week 9(4/28- 5/4)

.5 hr

.5 hr1 hr.5 hr1 hr.5 hr1 hr

Meeting and emailing Dean Wahlund, Lions Club memberSpeaking with Jessica from Saint Peter Herald NewspaperCreating time template for group and group project to do listMeeting with Katie to discuss Krrb, Lions, and Saint Peter HeraldMaking table-tent advertisements for cafeteriaMade High School volunteer sign-up sheet templateConstructing collection bags that are distributed to entire campus.

Week 10(5/5- 5/11)

.5 hr2 hrs1 hr2 hrs1 hr

Volunteer Sign up and Status meeting with KatieTyping the Research Finding first draftEmail exchanges with Krrb and phone call with Veronica from KrrbOutlining and preliminary writing of FindingsPrinting Table Tents and meeting with Student Activities Office

Week 11(5/12-5/18)

1 hr1hr

2 hrs1hr1 hr3 hrs

Lunch meeting and Garage Sale presentation to Saint Peter Lions ClubOutlining Recommendation of Practice and Research and Finalized Saint Peter High School VolunteersWriting first draft of Recommendations for PracticeCreating finalized volunteer signup sheet for Saint Peter High School volunteersCreating campus cardboard posters in Gustie DenFinalizing Recommendations for Practice/ Finalizing Personal Billable Hours

Week 12(5/19-5/25)

7 hrs7 hrs3 hrs

Combining project papers and editing consultation projectFinalizing paper and powerpointPracticing and preparing for presentation

Total 66 hrs

32

Dates Hours Action Garrett Fuchs

Week 1(3/5-3/9)

1 hr1 hr

Met with groupBegan research process

Week 2(3/10-3/16)

1 hr.5 hr

Met with group for researchMet for the first time with Katie and Ashley

Week 3(3/17-3/23)

1 hr Researched for project

Week 4(3/24-3/30)

2 hr 1 hr

Met with group to work on review of litMet with group for weekly meeting

Week 5(3/31-4/6)

1 hr met with group for weekly meeting

Week 6(4/7-4/13)

Week 7(4/14-4/20)

1 hr1 hr.5 hr

Met with group to work on methodologyMet with Caitlin to work on Review of LitMet with group for weekly meeting

Week 8(4/21-4/27)

.5 hr1 hr2 hrs

Weekly meeting with groupWorked on the Review of LitFinished my portion of the Review of Lit

Week 9(4/28-5/5)

.5 hr Weekly meeting with group

Week 10(5/6-5/12)

.5 hr Weekly meeting with group

Week 11(5/13-5/19)

2 hr1.5 hr1 hr

Worked on the introduction to our paperWeekly meeting with the group, made signs to advertise the eventWorked on introduction for the paper

Week 12 7hrs3hrs

Finalizing paper and powerpointPracticing and preparing for presentation

Total 30 hrs

Dates Hours Action Taylor Meurer

33

Week 1(3/5-3/9)

1 hr1hr.5 hr

Group meeting to discuss smart goalsResearching “recycling” for review of lit Meeting with Kathi to discuss Review of Lit

Week 2(3/10-3/16)

1 hr1 hr

Group meeting in Gustie DenGroup meeting review of lit

Week 3(3/17-3/23)

1 hr.5 hr1 hr

Research for recycling articlesMeeting with group/KathiWorked on survey/sources for environment

Week 4(3/24-3/30)

.5 hr2hrs.5 hr.5 hr

SurveyGroup meeting review of litGroup meeting Gustie DenSurvey/meeting with group

Week 5(3/31-4/6)

.5 hr Edit/review review of lit

Week 6(4/7-4/13)

.5 hr

.5 hrCreate survey on survey monkeyCreate Institutional Review Board

Week 7(4/14-4/20)

1hr3 hrs

Articles for background informationArticles/Review of Lit

Week 8(4/21-4/27)

Week 9(4/28-5/5)

1 hr2 hrs2 hrs

SurveySurvey responses write-upMeeting in Gustie Den/Making donation bags

Week 10(5/6-5/12)

1 hr2 hrs1 hr

Survey Write-upMeeting in lib/consolidation of school dataEditing

Week 11(5/13-5/19)

.5 hr1 hr

TablingFinal Survey findings

Week 12(5/20-5/26)

7 hrs7 hrs3 hrs

Combining project papers and editing consultation projectFinalizing paper and powerpointPracticing and preparing for presentation

Total 43.5 hrs

Dates Hours Action Tamara Meuwissen

34

Week 1(3/5-3/9)

1 hr1hr.5 hr

Group meeting to discuss smart goalsResearching “recycling” for review of lit Meeting with Kathi to discuss Review of Lit

Week 2(3/10-3/16)

1 hr1 hr

Group meeting in Gustie DenGroup meeting review of lit

Week 3(3/17-3/23)

1 hr.5 hr1 hr

Research for recycling articlesMeeting with group/KathiWorked on survey/sources for environment

Week 4(3/24-3/30)

.5 hr2hrs.5 hr.5 hr

SurveyGroup meeting review of litGroup meeting Gustie DenSurvey/meeting with group

Week 5(3/31-4/6)

.5 hr Edit/review review of lit

Week 6(4/7-4/13)

.5 hr

.5 hrCreate survey on survey monkeyCreate Institutional Review Board

Week 7(4/14-4/20)

1hr3 hrs

Articles for background informationArticles/Review of Lit

Week 8(4/21-4/27)

Week 9(4/28-5/5)

1 hr2 hrs2 hrs

SurveySurvey responses write-upMeeting in Gustie Den/Making donation bags

Week 10(5/6-5/12)

1 hr2 hrs1 hr

Survey Write-upMeeting in lib/consolidation of school dataEditing

Week 11(5/13-5/19)

.5 hr1 hr

TablingFinal Survey findings

Week 12(5/20-5/26)

4 hrs Practicing and preparing for presentation

Total 30.5 hrs

35

Dates Hours Action Keri Pickel

Week 1(3/5-3/9)

1 hr1hr.5 hr

Group Meeting to Discuss SMART GoalsGroup Meeting with client in Gustie DenResearch for Review of Lit

Week 2(3/10-3/16)

1hr1hr

Group Meeting with client in Gustie DenGroup Meeting for Review of Lit

Week 3(3/17-3/23)

1hr1hr

Group Meeting with client in Gustie DenGroup Meeting to Finalize SMART Goals

Week 4(3/24-3/30)

1hr2hrs2hrs

Group Meeting with client in Gustie DenReview of Lit ReconstructionContacting colleges to interview and set up times following spring break

Week 5(3/31-4/6)

Week 6(4/7-4/13)

1hr4hr

1hr1hr

Research background information for the college interviewsPhone interviews with Penn State, Penn State at Harrisburg, University of Texas, and Notre DameGroup Meeting with client in Gustie DenWriting thank you letters to send to each of the colleges we spoke with

Week 7(4/14-4/20)

1hr.5 hr15 mins2hrs1hr

Group Meeting with client in Gustie DenExchange emails with Paul Peterson, Saint Peter High SchoolMeeting with Kathi about Review of LitGroup Meeting about Review of Lit RevisionsMethodology

Week 8(4/21-4/27)

1hr1hr.5 hr3hrs1hr

Group Meeting with Client in Gustie DenMeeting with Saint Peter High School Principal, Paul Peterson regarding volunteersGroup meeting and cutting out flyers for Wellness FairAttending Wellness Fair to help with boothWriting interview transcripts

Week 9(4/28-5/5)

4hrs1hr.5 hr3hrs

Writing interview transcriptsMaking table-tent advertisements for cafeteriaMeeting with Katie to discuss Krrb and Saint Peter HeraldConstructing collection bags that are distributed to the entire campus

Week 10(5/5-5/11)

3hrs2hrs1hr

Writing interview transcriptsOutlining and preliminary writing of findingsPrinting Table Tents and meeting with Student Activities Office

Week 11(5/12-5/18)

1hr1hr

2hrs

Creating campus cardboard posters in Gustie DenOutlining Recommendation of Practice and Research and Finalized Saint Peter High School Volunteer SheetsRecommendations for Future Research

Week 12(5/19-5/25)

7 hrs7 hrs3 hrs

Combining project papers and editing consultation projectFinalizing paper and powerpointPracticing and preparing for presentation

Total 65.25 hrs

36

Dates Hours Action Caitlin Whitney

Week 1(3/5-3/9)

1 hr1hr

Group Meeting to discuss Smart GoalsGroup Meeting with Client in Gustie Den

Week 2(3/10-3/16)

1hr1hr

Group Meeting with Client in Gustie DenGroup Meeting for Review of Lit

Week 3(3/17-3/23)

1hr1hr

Group Meeting with Client in Gustie DenGroup Meeting to Finalize Smart Goals

Week 4(3/24-3/30)

1hr Group Meeting with Client in Gustie Den

Week 5(3/31-4/6)

Spring Break

Week 6(4/7-4/13)

1hr.5 hr

Group Meeting with client in Gustie DenResearch for Review of Lit

Week 7(4/14-4/20)

1hr1 hr2hrs1hr

Group Meeting with client in Gustie DenReview of Lit researchReview of Lit revisions with groupWriting Methodology first draft

Week 8(4/21-4/27)

.5 hr

.5 hr1 hr

Group meeting and cutting out flyers for Wellness FairMet with Garrett to discuss Review of LitTyped and emailed Review of Lit

Week 9(4/28- 5/4)

1 hr Constructing collection bags that are distributed to entire campus.

Week 10(5/5- 5/11)

.5 hr Met with Garrett and Ashley to talk about progress

Week 11(5/12-5/18)

1 hr2.5 hrs2hr

Writing first draft of Purpose of ProjectCreating campus cardboard posters in Gustie Den and distributing them around campusFinalizing Purpose of Project/ Finalizing Personal Billable Hours

Week 12(5/19-5/25)

7 hrs3hrs

Finalizing paper and powerpointPracticing and preparing for presentation

Total 32.5 hrs

37

Interview Transcripts

Penn State- Al Matysovsky

Trash to Treasure started 12 years ago at Penn State. I’m the waste manager here at Penn State and I have since brought on a lady who will be taking over the waste management details and I’m going to be moving to a program manager role for the overview our waste programs here at the University. When I was the front line guy that had the people that moved the stuff on campus that would be solid waste I was asked by our leadership, where don’t we do a very good job here on campus? I identified four areas: (1) we don’t do a good job with mixed office paper, (2) we don’t do a good job with postconsumer food waste in our composting program, (3) we are not doing a great job with our construction and demolition waste, and (4) we don’t do a very good job with student move out material. We need to improve in all these areas. Now that was 12 years ago, since then I am proud to tell you that we have attacked every one of those areas and we are doing a much better job.

The response to the student move out was our leadership handed it over to a gentleman named Fraiser Gregor. Fraiser assumed a chairmanship role and put together a move out materials committee and was really a focus group. We sat down and talked about what can you do with this stuff, because we knew there was valuable material in it and if you collect it and you try to warehouse it there would be a cost and who was going to collect it, if you paid people it would be so expensive. We talked it through and the idea that we came up with was why don’t we collect this stuff and give it to the United Way. Now the waste stream belongs to them and if they sell it they get to keep the money, so rather than us paying money for items to go to the landfill they can give the money to our neighbors in need through the United Way’s agencies process. We get the avoided cost of the savings from the material not going to the landfill, which happens to be 102 miles from campus. They loved the idea.

Now we were so naive, this discussion was happening in March and we said let’s just do it. The sale we identified would be on Memorial Day, so we had two and a half months to put this together and we attacked it. What we asked our students to do would be to donate goods in certain locations that were labeled around campus. We did that because our lawyers told us, if you don’t label it up someone’s going to come back on you saying, “My Rolex is missing, you took it, you sold it, and I want the value of the Rolex.” We are going to get a lot of suits coming out from the students and they said if you put it in an area that has plaques up that say, “This is a Trash to Treasure donation area; all materials belong to the United Way once it is placed in this bin.” Then we can defend that in the court of law should we be sued, so that’s what we do. We asked our students that put tables in our commons area and it was students asking students to please donate your unwanted goods that had quality, this would be clothing, bicycles they no longer wanted, or old computers. From freshman all the way to the seniors we collected materials in all of our resident’s halls. Our first year we had the most we have ever collected with 85 tons of donated student goods that we received over a one month period.

We setup the sale in an old horse arena here at Penn State and it was 250-300 tables, we pulled out bleachers where we put the shoes and we stacked the tables with stuff. There was 85 tons of student donated goods that we didn’t know what kind of trouble we were going to get into. Whether it made sense or not, I can tell you we were still setting up materials Saturday morning of the sale. We worked the night around for three days, it was 24/7 operation with three or four hundred volunteers coming in on shifts. We set it up where some people donated hotdogs and selling them outside the door, with all proceeds going to the United way.

We opened the doors and when we did there was a line outside that was about 300 yards long. We had people in that venue crawling all over the stuff picking their purchases and we avoided and diverted material from the landfill through that process. We made $15,000 dollars because the stuff was just thrown on the table and you know if it was a shirt it went on the table. Now if you go into our sale the shirts are by size and gender. The ones that have buttons are hung up on racks; it looks like you are walking into a department store. Back then it was because we were under the gun to get it done, we threw it on the tables and we sold it.

We have greatly improved the process if you will of the sale. When we were in that first year we had two TV stations and three radio stations walking around doing interviews. We had the President of the university and his wife, three or four vice presidents, just a tremendous amount of interest because nobody had ever done this before.

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In fact the department of environmental protection they came and spent four hours walking around with our volunteers shaking hands and thanking them for doing this. We had a lot of energy and what that energy did was kind of pulled all of this into Beaver Stadium. We didn’t have enough room for all the stuff so we asked our leadership to ask football if we could use Beaver Stadium. Beaver Stadium hold 110,000 people and they liked the idea. They became partners with us and we have had it here at Beaver Stadium every year but one because of construction. We had to find another place.

So when you come to Penn State you walk in to Beaver Stadium the day of the sale, there is a quarter of a mile of tables set up, we have a furniture area staffed by someone, we have people at varying stations along the way, we have checkout lines at both ends when you come in to the venue and when you go out of the venue, we have prepay folks that will help you count your stuff and tag your items so all you have to do is hand that to the cashier and you can pay by card, cash, or check. With prepay they say, “ok that will be $25” and you go out with your goods so you don’t have to unload all your items, we use the honor system.

Our average tons per year are 65 and that is the minimum amount that we expect to get per year. We have raised in 11 years $556,000 for the United Way. The United Way of America has recognized our program as the best community service types of programs in the country. They use us as an example of how to include your community in your philanthropy. We have expanded it to include honorary chairs where you pick somebody that is either a celebrity or well know, we had Coach O’Brian last year (the football coach). This year we have his weight coach coming to the sale. The weight coach was actually getting rid of some lifting equipment and they have donated two weight benches with equipment. Coach Fitzgerald has signed them and we are going to raffle those off and that will be part of the take for the United Way.

We have a gentleman that has approached us that has a relationship with a person what a brat trailer. His job is to go around, he is the vice president of a bank, with the brat trailer and he sells food at different philanthropic events and all the proceeds go towards the United Way. He has approached us this year and wants to become part of the Trash to Treasure sale. So it has a reputation, we have had a lot of people wanting and willing to put their name on it. We have diverted over 700 tons from the landfills, which pleases us to no end and we are very proud of that number.

Some of the benefits that we did not realize would happen but now can measure it is that the students carrying rugs and other materials from their rooms that they might typically leave behind are eliminating all these labor charges from the housing people. Those labor charges that would have been overtime have all dried up and can justify the Trash to Treasure sale. We use those numbers in our letters to our leadership members justifying the sale and how we intend to give money back to the United Way.

There are a whole bunch of pieces and it boils down to a couple of hero groups: the students and their generosity to support the Trash to Treasure sale, our volunteers that come, we have a Trash to Treasure committee that meets year round.

The committee meets leading up to the sale. In the summer we don’t meet at all, starting in September its monthly, and as soon as we get past the new year its every week and that leads right up to the sale. The sale happens in Beaver Stadium on June 1st. We have relationships with people at the end of the sale which include the Salvation Army, American Rescue workers, Goodwill; there is a whole bunch of people that take the items. The objective is to keep the stuff out of the landfill, it’s a waste management tool, but it also raises money for philanthropy and that’s the beauty of it. It’s really a waste management tool but at the same time you’re helping a lot of people by giving them a hand up, not a hand out. So that’s the story of Beaver Stadium and Trash to Treasure.

Q: How do you market for the event?A: I’ve been with the program since its inception; I was there for the first meeting. One thing, it was brand new enough that it peaked people’s interest. They would say, “What are you doing with that stuff?” They would tell them that students donate the goods and we are having a big yard sale and the money is going to help the United Way. The United Way is the preferred charity of the University. It had a ring to it because the United Way does an awful lot in our town, so people understood what we were doing. Because it was the United Way and they have a presence in the community people understood what that meant.

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The United Way has a volunteer base so they have a tremendous marketing reach. When the United Way says it you can have United Way of America endorse it as well.

Inside of Penn State we started with a marketing group that came up with some slogans. For example, it would say Trash to Treasure: give it up for good. And for good is in italics, so when you look at it that is kind of our brand. We put the posters up in the dorms, it had a little description of what we were trying to achieve. Very early on we got a young man involved and he started Trash to Treasure in Bloomington and he made a movie about it. So a couple years into we were able to put a movie out about Trash to Treasure. All of these little pieces and I’m not sure which one was the better one, but all of these pieces touched a different group.

I was doing presentations, we got local high schools involved, and we used the local newspaper because they said that this was new and different. They come in every year and take pictures and talk about the sale and presale type things. They also took pictures of items that would be at the sale to give people an idea of what would be there.

We had a three-quarter length fur coat and we never gauged. It was probably worth hundreds of dollars and we sold it for $20. Once we got in Beaver Stadium and had more volunteers we got a ton of interest from the community. We were then able to separate the clothing by size and type. We had people taking the ragged or dirty materials out. You could walk through the sale and things were separated by sections. We used newspaper, posters inside of our facilities, we used students at tables to spread the work, we had little handout cards that had the date on it and how you could participate as a volunteer and where to put donations. These methods were all very effective, especially the hand out cards because anyone can carry a three-by-five note card and stick it up on their bulletin board to remind them.

I had labor crew people who would go around and pick up the goods in the donation areas. We wouldn’t want to go to that room if there was just a chair or a jacket in there. We wanted to go to the room when is full because that’s efficiency. So what one of the workers did, was he built a script of the locations and then people peak into that location in the morning and they call us and tell us don’t come here but you need to go pick up elsewhere. Then you may only have to go to five places versus fifteen. That built efficiency into our programs. So we have been crawling all over it to develop better processes and also taking suggestions from people that have been in the venue, what did you like and what didn’t you like. Someone said well I wanted to find computers and it took me all day long, so we came up with a treasure map. You can buy them outside for $5 and with that map you can go right to the item you were looking for instead of wandering around looking for it. There is about 10,000 people that rush into the venue at the beginning of the sale, so if you want to get a computer you need to know where they are. We also give away “treasure bucks” on every other map so people know that they spend $5 but there may be $20 in treasure bucks that they can use and redeem for items.

We have volunteers on sale day that help you to load your items; they have shirts that say Trash to Treasure on them and that makes them identifiable. We also have mug shots for people that are allowed to touch money because when you are paying for items you want to make sure that the person is legitimate. We had a person that figured out if you walk up and say to a volunteer, “Hey I’ll take your cash and I’m taking it back to the counting room.” The volunteer asked the person who they were and to see some ID and the person took off running. So we realized that we needed to have pictures of who could deal with money. So we have efficiency, we have police in the venue that sit by the counting room. One or two police walk the venue all day, we have emergency first aid people that come because we have had people get injured or become ill. That’s the look of it and we have for the first two hours we have a $5 entry fee. We call it the Early Bird Sale because then the people get in and they see all of the stuff set up. Then the people who don’t want to spend any money have to wait until after 9:30 and quite frankly a lot of the good stuff has been picked over at that time. We always say that you can get your money back with the first purchase. We don’t feel badly at all about charging people to get in. All of the donations, every penny, supports the United Way agencies and the people that serve our community, so that goes over really well with the folks.

Over the years we have had information tents that the United Way volunteers sit at and tell people about who they are and what they do. We have places that people can sit if they are enjoying a hotdog and soda from the vendors that work with us.

It truly is community involved, we never tell anybody no. If someone says they want to be part of it we look for opportunities to give them something that they can manage. There was a group of football players that wanted to

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help so we had them handle the furniture because that’s big heavy stuff and those are big strong boys. We look for opportunities to involve people in the venue.

Q: Is there anything specific that first year that you overlooked?A: I can tell you there were thing that we were unaware of that became apparent. For example, the first year about 10 tons of that 80 tons were cement blocks because students were building shelves in their rooms. Because that is overloading on the floors, housing made a rule that you aren’t allowed to do that anymore. We stacked the blocks on pallets and we sold that as construction material to a contractor. One thing that you don’t want to do is hold items for people. Make them purchase it. The other thing that you should not do is lower prices the longer the sale goes on. We did that for two years and we said it was a bag sale at 1:00pm and we advertised for it. People came at five in the morning and waited for the gates to open, went in and took all of our good stuff, put it in bags and sat there from 7:30 until 1:00 so they could buy a bag for $10. All of our good football donations, football shoes, and stuff from our bookstore were stuffed into these bags. One guy told me that he makes hundreds of dollars on the shoe sale out on eBay. We stopped doing the bag sale. We realized early on that we needed people at the end of the sale to take the items that didn’t get sold. Have as many of those people lined up as you can because you are going to have stuff left over.

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Penn State Harrisburg- Andrea Hoarner

Q: Can you tell us more about the size of your campus?A: We have a very close community that is adjacent to campus, so it is closer to maybe 800 students. Penn State Harrisburg is a common wealth, we are more commonly known as a branch of the main campus, Penn State. This campus is mainly upper classman only. The year of 2003 was the first year that we took on freshman so we are new in that area. We are growing as the population grows.

Q: How do you go about collecting your donations from the students?A: What we do is we shoot out an email to our students letting them know that collection dates are going to be coming up during the week prior to finals and the week of finals. We have a central location within the dorm areas that the students can drop off and we also have another area on campus where we would also collect from faculty and staff. They could drop off their items at that location as well. Some additional things that we do just to remind the students not to throw their stuff away is we have some signs that we make up that say, “Stop. Think. Can this be donated?” We put these on the large garbage bins, just so that if there is a situation like, hey I have a TV that works but I don’t want to take it home with me, I have some clothes I don’t want to take home with me they are reminded that they can donate it.We do have a large international population. They buy all these things while they are here and then they just go and throw them away. So, these are almost brand new things to us that we just put it anywhere that they might throw something out and we put flyers throughout the dorms, we push it through the student body.

Q: Do you guys take any donations from the community as well, or is it predominately student donations?A: This was the first year that we asked if we could take donations from the community. We don’t have the infrastructure here to be able to take those donations. We would get so much stuff and not have a place to store it. If we had a place to store it and we had enough volunteers to be able to help us out with the amount that would come in, that would be great. At this time, they are actually tearing down the building where we used to store our stuff, so we are in a little bit of a pickle trying to find out where we are going to collect the stuff that’s coming up.

Q: How many volunteers do you typically have throughout the whole process?A: Committed we have probably ten. We do this at the fly. We are organized but a lot of this is done last minute because we are short staffed in a lot of areas campus wide. Like I said, we are growing so rapidly that we can’t keep up. So, whoever and whatever we can take we will. We do a lot of things on the fly. I do have a core of about ten people I can count on and we really tap into our student athletes because they do work in the athletic department so I heavily rely on them. Last year was the first year that they really got involved. Sorting and pricing is the biggest thing, which is where a lot of the time takes place.

Q: How do you go about pricing your items?A: When we price our items we just go through knowing that all our money is going to charity. We just price it like a normal yard sale. You know, at what price would somebody buy this for? It depends on the condition of the item. If there are a lot of little trinket things, we won’t individually go through and price all of those we will just put it in a lump area and say two dollars. We do this so we are not sitting there going through thousands of things. We allow negotiations, since we are a little bit smaller we can do that. What’s fair for somebody to come in and buy this for? And what you will often find is because our proceeds go towards the United Way and it is for charity they will often pay the listed price.

Not this year, but the year prior our area got hit hard with flooding so we didn’t make as much money that year because we had people who lost everything. They didn’t have kids clothes. So our biggest seller that year was kids clothes and we were literally selling it for $0.25/item. We wanted to price it as cheap as we could so they could load up and have something for their kids. Yes, we didn’t make as much as we did in years prior but, we helped out the community.

Q: What would you say is the highest you guys have ever had an item priced?

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A: We have someone who is an expert in antiques, so they help us with our pricing. I want to say we had an antique that was at $50 and it was in rough shape, so that is why it was priced the way it was. We had some collector’s bears that sold for around $20, but they were collector’s editions. We have never had anything higher than $50.Q: When is your sale date?A: We do it on a Saturday in the middle of September. We have moved from an outside to an inside yard sale. That has seemed to work better because you don’t have to have a rain date. You don’t have to wake up at 5:00am to go set everything up for an 8:00am start. You can set everything up the day before and show up just for the open.

Q: Who comes to your sale? (Community members, students, etc.)A: I would say that it is mainly community members. We do have some faculty and staff, but it is definitely mainly community members. Some students come and we again found them to be our international students. We have an international advisor who works with our Trash to Treasure group and encourages them to come to the sale.

Q: How do you advertise for your event?A: We just completed our third sale, so we are going on to our fourth year. We have a good relationship with the community newspaper and they are heavy on Facebook. We have a yard sale section on their Facebook page that they will start posting for us when the weather gets warmer and all the yard sales post up. They will do that for us for no charge. They will also give us an advertisement in the paper, either discounted or free. We will post it out to all our faculty, staff, and students.

On our main campus entrances we put posters so we could grab their attention. What we found worked best was we started working with our graphic designer and they did a cardboard sculpture. They reused the cardboard for purposes other than throwing it away. They made big signs that said “Trash to Treasure Sale” and they were huge. He posted them all around the entrances and up the main drag of the campus and that is what got people’s attention.

We were asking how they heard of the sale and they said, “Oh we were just driving by and saw a huge sign that said yard sale and we came in.” Others did say that they saw it in the paper or on Facebook, but the biggest number said the big cardboard signs. With that we tripled the amount of people that came in. Go around and talk to your maintenance people when they pull the trash. Any of the big cardboard boxes that might be going to recycling ask them if you can have them. Lay them out flat, get a sharpie, and just go at it. It’s that simple, but it was that effective.

Q: Is there anything you wish you would have known the first year or any tips you could provide us to help make our sale successful?A: Don’t waste your time in the sorting process. Just get the items in general areas, don’t think that it needs to be pretty. These yard salers are going to mess up your tables. Lay it out and price the big items, but don’t spend time pricing all the small items because it will take way too long. Try to get as many volunteers as you can and try to lock them down to the dates and times that they sign up for. That was our biggest issue, people said that they would be there and then we thought we would have twenty people and only five would show up. You really want to find those dedicated people who will come back each year and really be there when they say that they will.

There is going to be a lot of heavy lifting so make sure you have the man power to do that kind of stuff. We have finally worked it out with our maintenance department that they help out with some of the moving of things because they have the trucks and all of that. If you can do it indoors, do it indoors. It is hard enough to get volunteers as is, but to ask them to keep two weekends open if the weather doesn’t allow for the sale is just not fair.

Q: On the actual day of the event, how many volunteers do you need?A: I would stick with ten. The actual sales part, how we do that is have one cash location, instead of having people with multiple cash bags in their aprons. We have one main cash location where everyone checks out. We have scratch paper where people can negotiate a price with the customer and they would then write down that price and give it to the customer to bring to the cash location. That way the money is in one centralized location and you don’t have to worry about who has money and where it’s at. It’s just one check out spot, you get scratch paper, and you have people walking around helping negotiate prices. They then write the price the two agree upon, they take it up to the register, and they are good to go. You need about five people for that process. For clean up, you are going to want as many volunteers as you can, otherwise you will be there all day cleaning up.

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Q: What do you guys do with the leftover items from the sale?A: We have Salvation Army come in and take what they want from the leftover items.

Notre Dame- Frank Parker

Q: Can you tell me about what it was like to start your Old to Gold program?A: I was not involved when we first started, but I worked very closely with the individual that started it. When he left the University I took it over and ran it for three years and then I handed it over to another individual.

When I was getting ready to hand off Old to Gold last year I wrote a manual for the program and detailed out all of our processes of what we did.

Our Old to Gold program was started as a result of a man named Alan Baker. He went to Penn State and took a look at Trash to Treasure and came back and said Notre Dame can do this. So basically we utilize the football field like Penn State does, except for last year. Last year we had a challenge and we couldn’t use the football field, because so much construction was going on and they had to move it off sight. Luckily I did not have to be involved with that because it was a challenge trying to find a location. We had an individual who had a store front, kind of like a Kmart, that had closed and was empty. They donated the use of it for Old to Gold, which really helped with the parking and whole nine yards.

Alan Baker started it and there was not a lot of structure. Basically it was students putting stuff out by the dumpster to go to the sale. What we used to do was have a couple of the agencies come through and collect anything that the students put by the dumpsters and take what they wanted and everything else went to the landfill.

With Old to Gold we set these specific locations for the students to donate their items and then our warehouse and delivery people go around with trucks, pick it up, take it to the stadium, and we utilize nonprofit agencies here in town. We originally started with United Way and working with nonprofits. The United Way in town changed their structure and after two years they backed away from it. Alan took it on and the University ran it and pulled a lot of nonprofits to assist. We had a whole process of how the nonprofits were approved to take part in the event. Basically the process we utilize is the students put it out and we go around and pick it up. Then we go around and do more publicity for our event by putting flyers in the dorms. We got together with residential life and got them on board, our sustainability office started and we got them to do some different marketing things with the students as they were already talking about sustainability them. We have had some pretty good support by the students. We used to do it the Saturday after commencement and then there were adjustments that had to be made. We ended up having to store the stuff in trailers because we couldn’t have the sale until June and so one year we had 33 semi-trailers full of product that once we were able to get into the stadium we had to pull it out and set it up.

When it first started Alan would go around with groups of the volunteers to help pick the stuff up from the dorms. That didn’t work very well so our warehouse and delivery department basically just took that over. They have 7-12 trucks that they use. We park the trucks at night and at about 6am before they started their day we would go around and get the trucks. We tried to get the students to put the stuff on the trucks at night, but some places it worked and some places it didn’t. So the guys had to put the items on the trucks in the morning. They would take the trucks to the stadium and unload them prior to starting their normal workday.

Last year we set up guys to go around all day long, we had a couple trucks that were designated to just going around and picking up Old to Gold stuff throughout the day. The rest of the guys would do their normal job.

Q: When you guys have your event how many people there are students vs. community members?A: Actually because of the timing of the event all the students are gone. We have our sale during June because of things happening in the stadium. So as a result, all the students are gone and so we basically for the day of the sale have volunteers from different departments and administration that help assist with the sale. We have about 120-150 volunteers from the agencies that come in and basically run the sale.

A lot depends on how you have it setup. With our stadium we have a main concourse area that goes around the stadium but then off of that concourse area there are pods. The pods are cutouts where you go in and you go up the

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ramps to the seating. The pod areas are where we put a lot of the product and so we set it up so that the customers come in and one side of the pod and they have to filter through the pod and go out the other side. We have a bagging station at the end of each pod and at the checkouts of the pod they total up the value of what they got out of the pod is and put it in a large trash bag, seal it, and then write on the outside of the trash bag what the value of that bag is. We then have our cashiers at the exits of the stadium and folks just take however many bags that they have collected from the pods and take it to the cashier. The cashiers then total up the numbers on the bags and charge them. That is part of the reason why there are so many volunteers that are needed. If you didn’t have those pods and just had one big open area you could filter the customers through and just have volunteers at the checkout. The one thing we did have as far as furniture, we would get a lot of furniture, one year we had 130 futons. In the furniture area what we did was we had roaming cashiers.  They would have a money pouch and basically the customers would pay that roaming cashier rather than somebody at the gate. They would then remove the item, rather them having them carrying it to a line. They paid the roaming cashier and then they could take it right out. We would tag it so the volunteers at the gate would know that it had been paid for. We had one gate that all the furniture went out of.

Q: What is your pricing system like?A: The rule of thumb is price to sell, because when the day is done you don’t want to have anything left over. There have been a few years where we have had items leftover. We have had the same scenario a lot of times where we have had nothing over $50. We got in some pretty nice TV’s and electronics.  We allowed those things to go a little higher, but most things are much less.Furniture is generally $5-$10, our extremely nice futons are $20, couches are $20, coffee tables are $1-$5, and clothing is under $5.

We had very little of items at the high end of the price range, we kept the prices pretty low. Last year we basically had nothing left. Once the sale is over we allow the agencies to come in with their trucks and take whatever’s leftover. The ultimate thing is to avoid sending as little as possible to the landfill.

We do not allow the volunteers that work the sale day to buy any items until after the sale is over. When the sale is over we allow them to go through with a bag and take whatever they want from the leftovers. One of the big things that we have the most of here is bikes. We get anywhere from 300-500 bikes a year. Last year, our highest bike price was $30. One year we had one of the local bike places come in and do some work on some of the bikes and help price them. We do what minor repairs we can, we pump all the tires up and oil the chains, so we have different stages of the bikes. Bikes that are in pretty rough shape are $5, the nicer bikes are $15, and the best bikes that are in great shape are $30. The bikes go in 45 minutes.

We have what is called an early bird sale where we would charge $5 to anyone who wanted to come and shop from 7-9am. We basically would wrap our stadium; we would have about 3,000 people when we open the gates at 7am. We were pushing right around 5,000 people through the stadium on a sale day. That is a way to increase your revenue is having an early bird sale. From 9-11am anybody could come in and it didn’t cost the customers anything. We start the early bird ticket sales at 5am and we would have people waiting as early as 2:30am.

Q: What advertising do you do towards the community?A: It is well known, but we still do advertising because there are changes every year. Our media people set us up with radio and TV spots where we have an individual who is the spokesman for Old to Gold that would be interviewed. The week of the sale there are two or three TV stations in town that do live remotes at our stadium on their morning shows. They show what is available and what not. We have at least two of the TV stations at the opening of the sale. We have used billboards, flyers, and of course word of mouth is always good. Last year we had our sustainability office print out table tents and put them on all of the tables in our student center to help remind the students to donate items to Old to Gold.

Q: Is there anything you would recommend to us as a smaller school to help make our program successful?A: One thing that happened when we first started Old to Gold that you need to be conscious of is your workers can’t shop. If you have only one large screen TV and you are going to use that in advertising there has to be a draw. Let me tell you the situation that transpired that makes those two things critical to monitor. One year we had two large screen TV’s that were donated and people knew that they would be at the sale. When the doors opened people B-lined for those TV’s. We print out shirts for all of the workers so they can be identified and one of the workers took off her shirt and had the TV’s tagged so she could buy them. So we had a real problem with the people who were the

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first two people in line because when they got there it was already sold and they said how can that be? We had security guards there from our security department and we had to call one of them over because things got pretty hairy. So you just want to be mindful of those types of things and just the credibility factor. If you keep your credibility, it’s going to do a lot for the sustainability of the sale that’s why with our sale the University doesn’t take any of the proceeds. The University takes care of all the labor of getting the items to the stadium, costs for lighting and what not at the stadium, the trash bags, and advertising for the sale. The University picks up that tab for all of that. All of the proceeds go to the agencies.

Now in your case with being a small school you may want to pay a percentage and that’s fine. You need to make people aware upfront of what you are doing with the money. People are more inclined to come if they know that all of the money is going to the agencies.

One year we raised $73,000 in four hours for the agencies. The last four years we have raised about $50,000 each year. You also want to make sure that you have a key contact for each of the agencies. This will be the person that you are going to be in contact with and the person that is going to make their volunteers follow through with the guidelines you put in place. We put in a rule that if anybody from an agency was found not following the rules, like the lady that caused the problem with the TV, basically that agency would go on a one year probation and they would not be able to participate the following year. So there is a little bit of strength there to say that there are rules and regulations that have to be followed to keep the credibility and functionality of the operation. If you are going to work you are going to follow those and if not the whole agency loses out and they lose money because they can’t work the following year.

We had two agencies that we had to put on probation because their volunteers did not follow the rules, which is sad because it is all for the benefit of the agencies and community. To not follow the rules and lose the ability to participate really is a tough scenario.

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University of Texas- Emily Worthington

Q: What is the size of your event?A: It was originally a lot bigger than it is now. We used to accept furniture and donations from the city of Austin and now we just accept donations from the students and faculty. We do not accept furniture, so that makes it a lot smaller of a sale. It is mainly clothing, household items, and some other miscellaneous things. We normally sell everything at $1.00 a piece. So we made $2,000 in the fall and then we made $1,500 this spring at our sale. The rest of the items that aren’t sold, we donate them to Goodwill. The fall sale was pretty big for us and we just have it on campus.

Q: What was the determining factor for not accepting furniture anymore?A: I think it was a matter of space; we didn’t have enough room to hold all of the donations. We have a location on campus where we hold all of our donations and it ended up being too much to handle for one worker. So they just decided that it was just too complicated to have all the furniture donations. We were getting large couches and pretty hefty furniture so I think that was the main reason. But I actually think that they wanted to that start accepting furniture so they are hopefully looking for a larger area to store everything. So I think it just depends on the storage facility you have available to you for all your donations. I think it would be awesome if we accepted furniture, but it didn’t really work out this year.

Q: Do you take any donations from the community?A: Well it depends, we normally will but we don’t really publicize to the community for donations. We mainly focus our publicity on the students that are in the dorms on campus and let them know about it. So when students are moving out of the dorm that’s normally when we let people know that we are having a donation drive. Those people generate a lot of waste when they are moving out and they throw everything away. We try to just come in and collect all of that.

Q: What do you guys feel is best for advertising?A: Since we have been doing it for a few years, it is kind of known that we will be doing it at the end of the year so that helps. But we do flyers around campus, digital signs in the union, and Facebook events. We have done local news and things like that. We normally try to do the “Daily Texan” which is the University of Texas school newspaper, but it usually costs quite a bit of money to get a story in there. We try to seek out anyway to let people know, but like I said, since it has been going on for so long people know about it. People are already emailing me asking, “Where do I send my stuff?”

There is also the fact that we have these large bins in each dorm and there are signs all around these bins and people are automatically curious about what it is.

Q: Do you guys run into a problem with people throwing waste into the bins?A: Yes we do run into that issue. We try to make a list of things that we do and do not accept, because we have had to get a little more strict. We got a lot of underwear and things like that, which obviously we can’t really use. We have donated some of that to a place called State of Reuse and they make art out of things like that. But we do get some waste, especially when we used large trash bins even though we plastered flyers to them. I think that happens when people don’t really think about it and it can definitely happen for sure.

We usually a list of things that we do and do not accept on all of our flyers and we make sure they see that it is a donation bin and not just a trash bin.

Q: Why did you guys choose to not direct it towards your community?A: I think that there are several reasons, the first being that for my job we work about 10-15 hours a week and with the amount of work that it would be required to do that just wouldn’t work. I would have to go above my hours since it is only one person. I think that the campus environmental center is basically a student organization and we really

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want to gear a lot of our work towards educating students and helping them understand that the things that they are getting rid of can still be used. I think we really try to focus on educating students.

If we opened it up to the city of Austin we would get crazy amounts of stuff and where we would put all of it would be an issue. We have tried to work with the athletics department because in the past we were able to have things out by the stadium and store items in a huge area there. That’s when we collected furniture, but we did have to move to a smaller location so that’s a big factor. Even though we just collect clothing, household items, and things like that it still gets really full in the location that we have now. If you are in a smaller environment like you are, I would see no issue collecting donations from the community. University of Texas is about 50,000 students so you get all of those people and the community, it would be a lot to handle.

Q: Are you familiar with KRRB? What are your thoughts of KRRB (benefits, disadvantages, etc.)?A: I think KRRB is awesome. They donated some reusable bags to us for us to give to the students who bought things at our sale. The website was really awesome because we could just take pictures of all of the donations we had and forward them to Jessica or Andrew and they would upload them on the website for us. We would put the website on our flyers and Facebook page and say take a sneak peak at some of the sale items that we will have. That sparks a lot of interest in students to come to the sale.

A disadvantage is that a lot of people would come looking for specific items and sometimes it would already be sold and it was really hard to keep track of that during the sale. It definitely has to stay really organized. KRRB had the idea of having an intern specifically to do that job to make sure that people knew what was sold and what was still available. They would then keep that updated on the website and I think that is a great idea for the future.As far as getting people interested in the sale, I think it is really good.

Q: Did you use KRRB more as a marketing tool rather than selling goods?A: We did not sell items through KRRB. The whole thing with KRRB is that it is more a local craigslist. They really like to promote reducing shipping costs and being neighborly within the city. We did have some people ask to buy items that they saw on our corner and we would tell them to just come to the sale. In certain situations I would hold items in the office for them and they would come and buy them from me. We would never ship anything to them and we would then explain what we were trying to do.

Q: Does KRRB ask for anything in return?A: They haven’t asked for anything in return. I think that they are just trying to get their name out there, so I think having their name on the reusable bags and their website on the flyers helps them out. We had discussed doing more with them and I hope that we will. I’m sure we could go a lot of places with them, because I think that they are a really great tool.

You will have people asking to buy items, but again I would just direct them to the sale. People will get upset, but they will have to deal with it. If they were a student or a faculty member and they couldn’t come to the sale, like I said I would hold items for them. I think it is definitely beneficial and they are really great to work with. They are really helpful and are good people.

Q: Is KRRB well known in your area?A: I don’t think that people really knew what it was before we started using it as a marketing tool. Again, that is what they are getting out of it because that is free publicity. I think that there are a few people that were familiar with it previously, but not many.

Q: What is your pricing strategy that you use?A: We price everything at $1.00. In the past it wasn’t that way because we had furniture and larger items. Now that it is just clothing and certain household items we label everything is a dollar. People tend to buy a lot more that way. We had one woman who came and spent $100. People will buy a lot of stuff at that price. We have TV’s and printers that will go for $1.00. It also helps because then people aren’t as picky with things because it is only a dollar. That is the system that we came up with this year and it seems to work pretty well.

Q: How many volunteers do you guys have on the day of the event?

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A: We have different shifts throughout the sale, but we normally have about 30. We will have people managing the money, people bagging the things they buy, and have people walking around to ask questions and monitor stealing.

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building program participation.

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