And Some Things are Just Like Home

During move out a few weeks ago, I had the fortune to participate in Give and Go, a program developed to collect the leftover items students did not want to take home and donate them to Women in Need. I say fortunate, because although I hauled all sorts of furniture and boxes of random items all over campus on one of the first truly hot days of the summer, I ended up with a number of random things I had in fact been looking for. A floor length mirror, for example. I had been wanting one, and in one hallway there was not one, but two. I had my choice.

I also glanced in the dumpster, and was alarmed to realize that despite our efforts, there was still an array of usable items, including a chair and a relatively new bike. Alas. But this is fairly normal- spending all my time in the vicinity of Buildings and Grounds, I am privileged enough to constantly monitor the items that end up in the dumpsters, and scavenge any useful items I find.

I really shouldn’t have been surprised then to come upon the Mainz University recycling and discover a mountain. Mainz has a much larger university than little old Washington College- about 35,000 students to be precise. The majority of these students don’t live on campus, reducing, I suppose, your average student waste stream- clothes, books, the bizarre little things students tend to accumulate (plastic inflatable hands, anyone?). But here I found a mountain of computers, fax machines, printers, even typewriters, all waiting, I sincerely hope, to be recycled. When I say mountain I am not exaggerating. I could have climbed up the side, as it towered over my head. There was a similar mountain of office chairs. Nothing, absolutely nothing, except office chairs. Most of which looked to still be in good condition.

This in particular blew my mind. Ok, fine, obsolete electronics tend to get thrown out and recycled. I can accept that, even if I don’t like it. But office chairs? What’s obsolete about an office chair? Office chairs in the Custom House are at a premium, so even the one with the broken arm gets used. But here, before my eyes, was a cornucopia of office chairs. Not to mention the four, count them, four, accompanying trailers (as in, the back part of a tractor trailer) full of everything else you can imagine getting thrown away at a college. Wall sized maps (of Romania), planters, desks, lamps, the entire contents of a kitchen (oven, utensils, pans, plates, cake mix, spices), and rows and rows of mini fridges. Not just one. Rows.

And it’s not just the university. Walking around the city, I consistently see piles of what we translate to “big trash,” which the Germans call sparemüll. Furniture by the scores, working tvs and dvd players and just today, an entire kitchen floor, the planks of hardwood stacked on top of one another in an enormous pile. I think somewhere in my mind I imagined Europeans were simply more thrifty than Americans, and would therefore waste far less in terms of usable items. They tend to hang on to their cars until they fall apart, for example. But clearly I was wrong. While I’m sure there are some exceptions, I can hereby state that Germans are just as wasteful when it comes to consumer products as Americans. The evidence lines the streets. It provides a veritable (free) shopping mall for anyone with the time and energy to haul it away. And believe me, many people do, which may be the one difference between here and America.