Goodwill Partnership Adds New Dimension to Campus Sustainability

OCTOBER 4, 2011
by Sara Morano ’13, Contributing Writer

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

You don’t have to live in a Furman eco-cottage to put this slogan into action.

As of this summer, there’s a new way for the university community to reduce, reuse, and recycle. That’s because Goodwill installed a new permanent drop-box location behind the McAlister Auditorium parking lot, next to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute building. Donations to the drop box – durable goods like clothing, appliances, shoes, and furniture – will be taken up on a weekly basis for redistribution in local Goodwill stores.

Many know Goodwill as the national nonprofit that spreads its namesake through Goodwill stores and provides low-cost goods, employment, and job training to people in need. However, as Phil Lewis, a manager with Facilities Services spearheading the project, points out, “Goodwill does a lot for the community other than distribute goods.”

Lewis, who has long been in charge of a variety of campus recycling efforts (including those of the blue-bin variety), has partnered with Goodwill for years on an annual basis.  Previously, Goodwill placed temporary donation sites outside of each dormitory and in North Village at the end of the spring term when most residents move out. The collected items once filled five tractor-trailers in a week.

Many of the donations received by Goodwill might have otherwise ended up in landfills. The new drop-box locations allow this special kind of recycling between Furman and the larger community to occur on a regular basis.

“We want to encourage everybody to use these boxes,” said Lewis, “In these tough times, people have a real opportunity to help other people in need.”