A boardroom table originally in Judd Hall was recirculated back into campus due a storage warehouse disposition event.
By Maureen McMahon
Through a recent unique collaborative effort that helped bolster the University of Chicago’s commitment to sustainability, faculty, staff, and the UChicago Rheaply online reuse marketplace helped divert thousands of pounds of furniture and equipment items from disposal into a landfill and instead into offices, labs, and departments that needed them.
Last August, more than 100 quality assets – ranging from office furniture to washers and dryers – needed to be removed from storage as part of the disposition of a nearby warehouse.
Recognizing the need for a sustainable way to recirculate these assets, the University selected the online reuse marketplace UChicago Rheaply to help facilitate the process of finding new homes for these items—both on campus and with donation partners from the local community. Event staff posted the wide range of the free items to the marketplace over three weeks so campus community members could claim assets to reuse, and a local moving and storage company assisted the effort by delivering them where needed.
Through this effort, UChicago ensured these items found new homes on campus and with community non-profit organizations and tracked the impact. In total, the UChicago Rheaply event diverted more than 32,900 pounds of items from being disposed into a landfill, prevented the generation of more than 13,700 kilos of embodied CO2, plus avoided more than $68,900 in replacement costs for UChicago and local non-profit partners.
“Seeing how this effort allowed so many items to be diverted from landfills was truly amazing,” said Adam Wilson, who directs customer success for UChicago Rheaply.
Of the 49 truckloads of furniture in storage at the warehouse, only six ended up going to a landfill, according to Brendan Vamos, the contract and sourcing manager of UChicago Procurement and Payment Services.
Although the need to empty the warehouse was a one-time event, utilizing UChicago Rheaply to recirculate and reuse campus office and lab items is available year-round. Faculty and staff with UChicago credentials can use UChicago Rheaply to both share items they’d like to donate or request items for campus reuse.
Learn more about this easy way to reduce the campus carbon footprint by visiting the Rheaply information page on the Office of Research Safety webpage.