Amherst College
OP-11: Materials Management

The college has a central warehouse on campus called the Seymour Warehouse that serves as the college’s stockroom, central receiving center, and surplus shed. Surplus / used office furniture (e.g., bookcases, tables, chairs, file cabinets) is held and made available for use in any campus office spaces. Faculty and staff can arrange for a visit to the warehouse to peruse and claim items from the inventory. The college has implemented a new asset disposal form that is required whenever any item is being disposed of from an office. The form allows the service team to assess what items are salvageable and reusable and which should be disposed of.

The Office of Sustainability together with the Facilities and Custodial teams coordinates the college’s donation / reuse programs. We have developed a coordinated campus closed loop system across the annual Move Out / Move In cycle that minimizes waste to the landfill during Move Out and reduces the purchase of new materials during Move In. Donations are gathered during Move Out through a well-coordinated and messaged campaign through the Office of Sustainability, Facilities Team, Athletics Department, and Office of Residential Engagement and Wellbeing. Students are provided donation bags with designated drop spots for collection marked in the first-floor common spaces within each residence hall. Donations are picked up by our Facilities team and amassed in the college ice rink where they are sorted over the summer by a student zero waste fellow. The student fellow sorts, organizes, and stages a giant free Yard Sale in the ice rink held during Move In / Orientation week. All of the usable donated room décor and dorm room accessories (e.g., linens, sheets, lamps, rugs, fans, decorative pillows, shower supplies, storage containers) are made available for free back to students. First year students are given first access, followed by returning students, staff, and faculty, respectively. Items available are typically in good condition and are items that students normally would go out and purchase from the surrounding big box stores or online. The program not only diverts items from the landfill on the back end, but also limits purchasing and consumption on the front end.

Donated clothing is offered in a separate free clothing extravaganza event held in the fall. Winter coats go to international students and students from warm temperate climates. Textbooks are given to a campus student run used book store “The Option”. Pleasure reading books are made available via free little libraries in the res halls and the campus library free book shelf. We have been able to successfully repurpose >90% of what we gather during Move Out.

During the school year clothing donation bins are set up in each of the residence hall laundry rooms. Free clothing pop ups are hosted by the Office of Sustainability throughout the year with these donations. The pop up program is coordinated and overseen by the EcoReps.

The Green Office program also hosts a virtual office supply exchange called GOSH (Green Office Shared Supply Hub) where offices can share excess office supplies across departments.

The college composts all of its pre and post consumer organic waste within the dining hall and at its cafe locations which includes any compostable cutlery and packaging in addition to the food waste. The college only offers compostable (no plastic) cutlery in our to go locations. The college has an agreement with Vanguard Renewables to pick up and process all of the campus organic waste. Vanguard mixes food waste with cow manure and places into an anaerobic digester. The methane produced is captured and sold as “green gas”, the liquid is used as fertilizer, and the solids as animal bedding.

https://www.vanguardrenewables.com/ 

During covid the college offered a reusable plastic to go container program in which students could take food to go in a green reusable clamshell that they would then return to the dining hall for wash and reuse. The program transitioned to compostable to-go containers because so many of the green containers did not find their way back, and the washing and coordination of their collection and distribution became too overwhelming. But the oversight and cost to maintain the compostable containers also became prohibitive and wasteful, and so Fall 2023 the college made the decision to do away with all to go containers in its dining hall facility and essentially require students to dine in using the reusable plates, cups, and silverware. Accommodations are available for those who need a compostable to go container. Although initially unpopular among students, the decision has significantly reduced the amount of food waste generated, helped significantly clean up the campus residential waste stream, allowed for centralized compost collection, and reduced overall costs significantly.

Yes, the college has eliminated plastic straws. Paper and compostable straws are available on request in the dining hall and cafe locations. We have also phased out the distribution of plastic bottled water and replaced with boxed water for large campus events like orientation, graduation, and campus festivals.

All disposable to go containers, cups, and utensils used in our dining hall, cafes, and catering services are compostable. We also recently added compostable “solo cups” for sale in the campus center store to encourage their use over the non-compostable Red Solo Cups that students like to use.

At Amherst College, we manage electronic waste (E-waste) under our Universal Waste Program. All electronic devices are collected on site before getting picked up, transported, and processed by a reputable company, NLR (https://nlr-green.com/). The main accumulation area for electronic waste is at the Science Center; it is accessible to all Amherst College students and employees. E-waste, however, often gets collected and transported from different areas of the campus, such as student dorms, IT and offices. These collections are coordinated through the Amherst College Department of Environmental Health and Safety and Grounds. Hence, both students and employees are encouraged to contact both departments for waste disposal.  Naturally, our IT department generates most of our E-waste and so college personnel will sometimes hand over waste to them, which eventually makes its way to the Science Center. 

We have a very robust Hazardous Waste Management System, which has been in place since 1999. 

We are a LQG because of lead paint abatements, and follow all of the MassDEP and EPA requirements for an LQG

 https://www.amherst.edu/offices/enviro_health_safety

We also have an asbestos, lead and PCB Program 

 https://www.amherst.edu/offices/enviro_health_safety/occupational-and-environmental-health