Valentino sneakers that retail for $980. A Tovala toaster oven, originally $390. A Clear Home Design Lucite table, which would have cost $899 — except in this case, it was free.
Lena Geller found those items, and many others, in the trash room of her apartment building in Durham, N.C., after scores of Duke University students had moved out at the end of the spring semester.
“It feels wrong for this much stuff to have been thrown out,” Ms. Geller wrote in an article for INDY Week, where she’s a staff writer. She kept a spreadsheet of the roughly 70 items she found in the trash, estimating, after doing some research, that they originally retailed for $6,600 in total.
“I’ve had a few friends text me after reading the piece, like, ‘We should put together some kind of business plan,’” Ms. Geller, 26, said in an interview. “It does feel like most of the stuff that I got was just sitting there. I do think there’s a lot of money to be made.”
Every year, as graduation season ends, many departing students throw away or simply abandon expensive household items and luxury goods instead of donating or taking them back home. Local residents and scavengers are stepping in, rescuing items to reuse or sell, then touting their finds on social media.
Peter Valley, a 47-year-old software company founder, has been selling discarded books from college students for years. To him, and many other scavengers, college campuses are a virtually inexhaustible source of goods that can be resold, kept or donated.
“My earliest success was dumpster diving at Caltech in Pasadena,” he said. “My girlfriend and I dumpster-dived a couple thousand dollars’ worth of books from the campus recycling center. That was a big ‘aha’ moment, where I realized that this could be a real business.”
These days, Mr. Valley is primarily focused on his software business. Reselling books nets him a monthly income in what he describes as a “low four-figure amount.” At his peak, he said, he had five-figure months.
Haul Videos, College Dumpster Edition
Some scavengers post haul videos of their finds on social media. Late spring sees an explosion of such content because that is when college students move out of their dormitories. “The stuff college kids waste is crazy,” a TikTok user with the handle @bethanytaylorr posted last month. Her 27-second video of rummaging through the dumpster at an unidentified college and rescuing household items, has been viewed nearly four million times.
Such social media posts can serve as both advertisements and how-to guides.
“The whole point of this is to get the stuff out of the landfill and have someone who can use it have it,” said Megan Godinez, whose TikTok account, MeganTheDDMvp, has nearly half-a-million followers. Ms. Godinez said there was a difference between foraging on college campuses and in the dumpsters behind the outlets of retail giants like Williams Sonoma or Home Depot. “College stuff is home stuff that you use, cleaning products, toilet paper, paper towels, a ton of Tide Pods and dish soap,” she said. “They’re extremely useful.”
Carla Manlapaz, 62, also finds plenty of household items when she dumpster dives at the college near where she lives in north central Texas (she did not want to reveal the name of the college for fear that school officials would crack down). She also found a Fender guitar, which she said she is hoping to sell on Facebook Marketplace for $200. She sells other items on sites like Etsy or Poshmark.
“It’s very exhilarating when you see all this good stuff that you can either make a little money on or use or donate to someone else,” Ms. Manlapaz said. “It’s a thrill. I mean, I’m 62 and I’m retired. Doesn’t take that much to amuse me.”
College campus dumpster diving isn’t new but social media has given it prominence. At the University of Wisconsin, a stretch of August has long been known as “Hippie Christmas” because so many students deposit their unwanted belongings on front lawns. Bostonians, who live in something of a giant college town, devoutly mark “Allston Christmas” each September. In a 1991 essay, Lars Eighner, who became famous for chronicling his experiences with homelessness, said that he focused his scavenging on a college town and that he found “it advantageous to keep an eye on the academic calendar.”
In recent years, many colleges have adopted what Scott Galloway, a podcaster and marketing professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, has called “the posture of luxury brands,” with lavish housing and gyms fit for professional athletes. Some say such amenities inflate costs while doing nothing in the way of education. Yet many parents readily fork over thousands of dollars for interior decorators to work their magic on a child’s college dorm.
At the same time, anxiety about climate change is rising among young people. Rescuing and wearing someone else’s Lululemon shorts is one way to fight back against pollution and wastefulness.
“It’s truly transgressive because it’s stepping out of that idea that we have to be consumers,” said Lisa Beiswenger, an assistant professor at Saint Francis University who taught a class on dumpster diving at the University of Akron. Her students discovered that the 300 million tons of waste Americans generate annually, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, include plenty of stuff that can be used, worn or eaten by someone else.
Too Much Junk
Blame the “Amazonification” of the American economy, said Rosalie E. Kerr, director of sustainability at Dartmouth College. “If you’re going to a party, and the theme of that party is the 1920s, you can go on Amazon and buy a plastic 1920s outfit for $17 with one click. And that’s really irresistible.”
College move-out season adds a twist because students need to clear out quickly. Many discover that, in the previous nine months, they’ve accrued far too many goods to store or bring home. Into the dumpster the Jazz Age flapper outfit goes.
“We have a lot of junk that’s in that category,” Ms. Kerr said.
Then come the dumpster divers. On social media, many marvel at their finds. Someone threw away what? You found that? But not everyone views the scavenging as a social good to be celebrated. “One of the challenges of creating a dumpster diving culture is the inequities,” Ms. Kerr said. Only certain people may know when, and where, to scavenge. Some may lack the physical ability for intensive rummaging. Others may be mistaken for trespassers. “It truly sucks that a Black person could possibly get mistreated or even killed doing the same thing we were doing,” one Reddit user wrote on the site’s dumpster diving forum.
Some colleges have tried to address the waste. Georgetown, for example, organizes a donation drive intended to align with “the university’s Catholic and Jesuit mission,” according to an email sent to students, urging them to leave items at one of four sites on campus. The email said that, last year, the school “diverted over 49,000 lbs. of material, valued at almost $334,000.”
But sustainability experts say that on many campuses, such efforts are either limited or nonexistent, leaving dumpster divers to perform an important service. Anna Sacks, a Manhattan-based waste expert, criticized Columbia University for not doing nearly enough to make sure that students can either donate or resell items like mini fridges, which are too cumbersome to carry home. At the same time, access to campus has been heavily restricted, making it an all but impregnable dumpster diving destination.
“To see this every single year is disgusting,” Ms. Sacks said. This year, she scavenged what she could, even as she approached her ninth month of pregnancy. “I got maple syrup that I just had with my yogurt,” she said. Her friend scored a Moncler jacket retailing for more than $2,000. (A spokeswoman for Columbia did not respond to a request for comment.)
Scavenging veterans say that anyone wishing to join their ranks should look for schools with high populations of international students, who are unlikely to haul televisions on transoceanic flights. For both safety and camaraderie, go with a group. And do remember that you’re going to be sorting trash.
“I bring hand sanitizer,” Ms. Sacks said.
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