I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

https://indyweek.com/culture/duke-students-dumpster-diving/

by drvladb • 1 year ago

258 318 1 year ago

Kon-Peki• 1 year ago

Looking at the data, Duke’s per-undergraduate donation rate (about 4.9 pounds) is comparable to that at other wealthy private universities like Princeton (7.6 pounds) and Georgetown (6.1 pounds). Duke actually outperforms some schools with similar student demographics like the University of Chicago (0.8 pounds) and Northwestern (0.9 pounds). Most large public universities hover around one pound per student.

This seems to assume that all students are “discarding” the same quantity of items each year. It also assumes that the only student donations that occur are ones that are tracked by their university. It’s hard to believe that it is true.

A place like UChicago is not known for being a party school; I doubt Balenziaga or Valentino items are in high demand. I would assume that people aren’t all that into fashion that goes out of style quickly, thus they probably aren’t throwing as much away. But maybe that’s just an “unfair” stereotype I have about UChicago students ;)

One thing I do know, however, is that up in the area of Northwestern, there is a strong tradition of donating things to churches and synagogues, who then hold rummage sales. There is even a “rummage sale season” and a circuit - every weekend there is a different set holding sales. It seems that any such donations here would not show up in any data that this author has collected.

sybercecurity• 1 year ago

I assume that "donation" also doesn't include graduates giving things to returning students. No way to even track that.

This amount doesn't really surprise me. This has been happening ever since students were in dorms. Even in my little liberal arts school, people would dumpster dive for stuff in the dorms where the rich kids lived. The dedicated divers would even go around after Thanksgiving break and the end of fall semester, when the kids who were too into partying left (or were kicked out) and just left stuff behind that the RA threw out.

FuriouslyAdrift2• 1 year ago

"UChicago is not known for being a party school"... lol

The unofficial motto is "where fun goes to die"

timewizard2• 1 year ago

Why does fun go there to die?

xivzgrev• 1 year ago

I did this once. I was a RA, and there must've been at least 6 mini fridges left behind. I was staying for the summer, so I cleaned the ones that were salvageable and sold them on Craigslist. Earned some easy beer money.

potato37328422• 1 year ago

It's pretty common for there to be enterprising locals and students who pick this stuff up and then list it on FBMP and CL in September.

bee_rider• 1 year ago

Did you keep one? (To hold the beer)

NoImmatureAdHom• 1 year ago

In Boston move in / out day (Sept. 1) is called "Allston Christmas". The students leave TONS of stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Day_(Boston)

duffyjp• 1 year ago

Hippie Christmas at UW Madison. I used to snag all kinds of stuff as a student.

https://uwalumni.com/news/hippie-christmas/

pknomad2• 1 year ago

This is not surprising to me a graduate of a school with a similar profile to Duke. The student body is composed of highly wealthy domestic students but also insanely wealthy international student body.

ty68533• 1 year ago

Insanely wealthy international student seems to be a pretty common component of the competitive STEM universities.

I vividly recall every fall the crazy number of wrecks by fresh students after "Daddy gave me a Maserati" with no idea how to drive it -- always asian. And then in the spring a couple of the poorest international students would commit suicide when they flunked out and all their families savings back home were forfeit on the tuition.

kevinsync• 1 year ago

There's some kind of 6-converging-storylines movie script in here somewhere.

pknomad2• 1 year ago

new nouveau riche

bpodgursky• 1 year ago

I'm a middle class American and I admit to leaving behind decent furniture (a bed, etc) just because I was busy with finals and had a hard deadline to be somewhere else for an internship or a job.

Didn't have time to juggle craigslist no-shows and stuff. Wasn't worth the $150.

GuinansEyebrows6• 1 year ago

townies in university cities have been dumpstering during move-out week since time immemorial. i remember finding an entire complete set of MS Office 9x on floppies in a dumpster when i was in 5th grade :) among many other things over the years. even once found what would have been a treasure trove of 'adult' videos only 5 years prior... 8 hour vhs bootlegs with 3-4 "films" each. but that was 2007ish and VCRs were mostly gone by then.

WalterBright2• 1 year ago

Save a VCR. Nobody makes them anymore, and the technology is not easily reproduced.

alnwlsn4• 1 year ago

Those 2000s VCR's made near the end were pretty crappy though. We used VHS well beyond when everyone else threw theirs out - it was a cheap way to record TV. We would find one, it would last 8-10 months, and then break. I must have taken apart dozens of them, it was a fun thing to do as a kid.

Meanwhile, my dad's VHS machine from the 80's works to this day, plus there is a service manual for it.

dekhn• 1 year ago

My parents did (and still do this) at a little ivy in the northeast. I got some good stuff including an introductory Grateful Dead CD (this was ~35 years ago). My dad would joke that all the graduates would throw away their tie-dye shirts and go to work on wall street (not completely a joke). Now we have an entire closet filled to the brim with used water bottles and I have to periodically clean through tons of stuff including very old jars of tomato sauce.

When I later graduated from college I had to dump stuff, mainly because I didn't have a car, and was moving to a small apartment in the city ~70 miles away.

GuinansEyebrows6• 1 year ago

on one hand, i hate how wasteful the culture around move-out day is *. on the other hand, i benefited from that behavior pretty successfully. i guess it's only waste if people don't pick it up and reuse it - and i'm happy to do so.

i wonder if all this is becoming any less common with the rise of fb marketplace/offerup etc. hard to measure such an organic phenomenon, i guess.

* truly not meant as a slight against a population - just speaking anecdotally as someone who spent 13 years of my childhood and my entire adult life dumpster diving for fun and profit.

dml21354• 1 year ago

My dad would joke that all the graduates would throw away their tie-dye shirts and go to work on wall street (not completely a joke).

I had a friend in college that did literally this. Guy sold weed throughout his time there. While he was a senior, his supplier who had graduated a year earlier hooked him up with an internship at his company's trading desk. Went to work on Wall St after graduation.

I was always amused that the marijuana business was more important to his career after school than his studies (I think he was an environmental systems major). He's a commodities trader now, which is fitting.

aidenn0• 1 year ago

I had a friend whose parents had pole barn on their property about an hour's drive from our university. He would scavenge furniture in the spring, then sell it in the fall. Gas was under $1/gal. back then, so costs were pretty low.

wnissen• 1 year ago

Apple's Airpods Max headphones appear to be the official uniform of University of California students. We've been visiting and I swear they outnumber normal headphones.

gotoeleven• 1 year ago

You will learn to think different like everyone else.

suzzer994• 1 year ago

I went through several pairs of crappy wireless headphones until I gave in and got airpods, which just work.

tdeck4• 1 year ago

Move out waste is a huge thing. At my alma mater in 2014 they had some program where you could leave things in the common room and they would be collected and supposedly donated. I remember spending extra time cleaning my (good quality) things that I couldn't bring with me, and then the next day seeing everything had just been bagged up and dumped into 2 large dumpsters.

lsllc• 1 year ago

The problem is that move-out happens in May, but move-in happens in late Aug/early Sept. So there's lots of useful stuff being discarded in May (beds, desks, bookcases, in-window A/C units etc) that would likely be in demand in Sept but have long been sent to the landfill by then.

UncleOxidant2• 1 year ago

Yeah, maybe the University could have thrift stores come in at the end of May and collect stuff they think they could sell to incoming students in the fall?

ForOldHack• 1 year ago

I kicked what looked like an empty card board box, and found two laptops w/ chargers, Retail $1800, Wiped their hard disks, updated all the software, put student software on it, and gave them away to other students.

I found literally a full bedroom of oak furniture, bed, a dresser, a desk, a bedside table, and an armoure... I could not get the armoure on my pickup truck, but I moved out all my old stuff, and moved in the oak, and oiled it all up, ( it had not been cared for well, so it soaked up all the oil, after a few treatments, it was grand.

Literally every university town, Berkeley, SF State, Cal State Chico... has yard sales in the late spring, and resales in the early fall, and a literal cottage industry of people who make money reselling, and armies of people who drive those neibourhoods late a night picking up everything they think they can resell - Its why all those mattresses are left.

josefritzishere• 1 year ago

Can confirm move-out day is very similar at Souther Methodist U. in Dallas.

pavel_lishin• 1 year ago

You don’t really have to do any digging—most of the stuff I’ve gotten was sitting on top of discarded furniture. But you do have to rush. After I took the Lululemon haul upstairs, I returned to find city waste workers loading things into a garbage truck, off to a landfill.

I'm frankly surprised other dumpster divers didn't get there first. I used to cruise around my university's campus during the end of the semester - got quite a bit of stuff that way, although none of it quite as pricey as what Duke students are apparently tossing.

knowitnone• 1 year ago

I live in a uni town and when graduation comes around(pretty soon), there are all kinds of goodies on the sidewalk and trashbins. LCD TVs, clothing, furniture, food, bikes, etc. Everybody talks about evironmentalism execept they don't actually practice it.

tdeck4• 1 year ago

Everybody talks about evironmentalism execept they don't actually practice it.

I think this is just a lack of planning and options for many students. Think about it - it's the end of the year, you've got a pile of exams to study for, and then a week or two later you've got to be out of the dorms. Many students don't have a car to haul things to Goodwill or sell them further afield, and nobody on campus wants to buy their stuff because everyone else is moving out at the same time. If they look into shipping the stuff, they find it's prohibitively expensive. So the only option available in the time they have is to trash it.

in_cahoots• 1 year ago

Do colleges not store stuff for students who will be back in the fall? My undergraduate school did this (and had a large contingent of students doing research over the summer), so graduation day just meant that furniture was mostly moved around and snatched up by other students, or even stayed in place as the students changed dorm rooms.

dml21354• 1 year ago

Everybody talks about evironmentalism execept they don't actually practice it.

My impression is that only about half the population, at most, even pretends to care about environmentalism.

fortran77• 1 year ago

But most likely that half is well-represented in college undergraduates.

bluGill10• 1 year ago

Everyone cares. They will often convince themselves that some things don't matter (global warming) or that their part is insignificant, but everyone cares in some way/time/form.

cmontella• 1 year ago

Lol this was my favorite thing to do at CMU. Except it wasn't luxury goods, it was all the textbooks and computer equipment they would leave behind.

dm035142• 1 year ago

Me too :) - state university in early 2000s , would take the textbooks from the trash walk them over to the textbook exchange and pocket ~$100 for ~3 hours of work

nancyminusone• 1 year ago

it also feels mildly wrong to take it

I never feel any guilt about taking things from the trash. About trespassing to somewhere you're not supposed to be? Sure. But if it's something that's 100% clear is in the trash and will be going to the landfill and not going to some charity reuse place or something, and I want it, I'm taking it.

timewizard2• 1 year ago

When I find people recycling out of our trash bins I just remind them that I have to ask them to leave because it's a liability issue. Then I let them know what our office hours actually are.

tantalor• 1 year ago

It is a feeling of disgust, not guilt.

You're rooting around in the trash. Humans know, or learn pretty quick, that trash is yucky.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 1 year ago

Depends on the trash. A co-worker and I would regularly grab prototype machines out of our dumpster. Thousands of dollars of quality electromechanical hardware (motors, precision linear slides, pneumatic cylinders, mini-compressors & solenoid valves, etc.) and big sheets of 6061 aluminum for the taking. Company had to throw it out and tell us not to take back out in order to take the write off.

At one point we upgraded to having an intern standing in the dumpster throwing stuff out to us as we directed him.

ben1040• 1 year ago

When I graduated 20+ years ago I scoured trash rooms on campus before my card access got shut off. I paid probably six months of rent by taking what I found and selling it on ebay.

dm035142• 1 year ago

Looked forward to move out day at state university in early 2000s. The university would rent dumpsters and place in the common outdoor areas. The dumpsters had the end door that would open so it was easy to walk inside of them without climbing.

I’d Spend all morning in the dumpster with some friends. Name brand clothes were good finds, also pretty much all the textbooks carried a trade in value. Lots of sealed food snacks as well.

I don’t know if the kids that threw them away were lazy or they just didn’t know about buy back, but the books easily brought me $100 for a couple hours of morning dumpster diving.

ghaff5• 1 year ago

The charitable take is that kids moving out from school have a ton of things they need to think about and deal with so taking optimal care of probably too many possessions may not be at the top of the list.

saulrh2• 1 year ago

Works even if you're not in a college town. I once pulled a $4000 set of speakers out of my building's trash room - Boston Dynamics floor speakers, Polk Audio subwoofer - and I was just in a random apartment building in the bay area. Turned out the tweeter on one of the speakers needed replacing but that was like a $40 part on eBay and ten minutes of work with a screwdriver, didn't even need a soldering iron. You can get some crazy stuff if you're in the right building. Really sucks seeing it go to waste when it isn't something you can take, I always have to fight myself to leave some things behind.

lostmsu• 1 year ago

Turned out the tweeter on one of the speakers needed replacing

How much time it took to figure that out, and what is the chance the thing would turn out unsalvageable?

saulrh2• 1 year ago

I had those speakers for a few years before someone else noticed it, lol. The other tweeter worked just fine, and the speakers as a whole were so good that even without the dedicated hardware for higher frequencies it was still better in those ranges than what I'd been using.

I don't know how likely it'd be for something like that to turn out unsalvageable. I think that essentially everything at that level uses wooden enclosures, so it'd come down to whether the speaker bit is set into the wooden enclosure with screws or adhesive, and I don't know about the industry enough to know what the ratio is on that. Probably mostly screws. Then getting a compatible driver is probably guaranteed, at worst you have to replace both sides to keep them balanced.

elzbardico2• 1 year ago

Lots of defects in speakers are actually serviceable for a reasonable cost. For high-end speakers, I think it is worth trying.

jrochkind1• 1 year ago

There are more rich people in the US than when some of us middle-aged people were younger, the distribution of wealth has gotten much more uneven, while the numbers of rich have gotten larger.

So, yeah, a lot more just really rich students than there used to be, rich enough to think nothing of throwing out luxury goods, finding it more convenient than doing something else with them.

Then the increase of wealthy international students on top of that -- also richer than most students 20 years ago, and add on even less convenient to try to move anything back home or do anything else with it.

dfxm122• 1 year ago

On our current trajectory, as time moves forward, you will need to be more and more rich to attend university. Even more so for universities like Duke, compared to, say, NC State or UNC.

TuringNYC2• 1 year ago

> On our current trajectory, as time moves forward, you will need to be more and more rich to attend university. Even more so for universities like Duke, compared to, say, NC State or UNC.

It is expected right? Our population has grown and we also have huge streams of foreign students...but the count of universities has largely been static. The class sizes are a bit bigger and the dorms accomodate more, but nowhere near in line with the demand. Naturally the prices have risen to meet the limited supply.

Not saying this is good, rather...we should be building more universities to stay in line with the general population

jccalhoun2• 1 year ago

I definitely remember walking through the dorm parking lot when I was in grad school and noticing that at least half of the cars were much nicer than the car I was driving.

SoftTalker5• 1 year ago

That is still the case for me, and has been throughout my life. I've never thought spending a lot of money on a car made any sense at all.

alnwlsn4• 1 year ago

It's not just students. Where I live (admittedly wealthy) people throw away everything they can't be bothered to do the slightest bit of maintenance on. I have found, and made functional:

- a snow blower

- various weed eaters

- vacuum cleaners

- a generator (higher capacity than the one I already had)

- a log splitter

- pressure washers (nozzles usually clogged with dirt)

- a chainsaw

- multiple typewriters (the Selectric I kept, the others I sold)

- a boat motor

- a sump pump (bottom was clogged with sand)

We've all seen those "saved from the garbage" restoration videos on youtube and wondered just how "garbage" that stuff was. Believe it, it happens.

ty68533• 1 year ago

Because it is cheaper to buy a new one than pay someone to fix most of those. A fairly significant minority of wealthy people got that way because they have no free time to do those things themselves.

lesuorac• 1 year ago

It's also often cheaper to treat many durable items as disposable.

i.e. buy a power washer each-ish time you need it compared to hiring somebody.

alnwlsn4• 1 year ago

Sure, but these people aren't wealthy enough that they still need to buy these machines (vs paying for a service to come in with their own stuff). I'm sure being able to afford new is a factor, but I also see a breakdown in ability to do basic repairs.

You would think the 3 minutes it takes to realize your pressure washer nozzle is clogged and poke it with a stick a few times to clear it and get back to the job at hand is a better time value over stopping, going inside, searching for a new one to buy....

A lot of the time the stuff isn't even broken, it's just old. They definitely will go and buy a new one if the old one "looks rusty" or something.

dkarl• 1 year ago

Often, when something breaks, I think I might enjoy tinkering with it and trying to fix it, but it feels like a luxury I can't afford. Hiring someone to fix it is a luxury that I can sometimes afford. It's one of those things that feels right, but you're also aware that it's a flex because you're embodying moral values celebrated by your social class, which people below your social class happen to not be able to afford to embody. But it's definitely a weaker flex than being able to take the time to fix it myself.

noboostforyou• 1 year ago

A fairly significant minority of wealthy people

Apologies if this is just a typo but I am really confused by this wording - isn't "significant minority" an oxymoron? If you had to express this as a percentage how many wealthy people are you saying got this way?

potato37328422• 1 year ago

Mowers out front of Lowes were $2k on up yesterday...

Sure, maybe you have a landscaper for that. Your landscaper knows a guy who's happy to get paid $100 slap a new $50 Amazon carb on your snowblower and lecture you about not leaving ethanol in it for 2yr straight.

AStonesThrow• 1 year ago

Generally, when I go into the sporting goods store, I look around at everything mechanical that may need maintenance, and I get the sense that whatever I chose, after the season is over, the company will discontinue the model, and spare parts will be unobtainable, and I wouldn't find a shop with the tools or knowledge anyhow.

Shoe repair is hit-or-miss. I contacted one who said it would be a 2 month turnaround time.

I purchased an item from a church supply and noticed that it included a molded plastic insert that I'd be removing to clean once in a while. So I contacted the vendor and asked whether I could purchase some spare inserts. "well, our supply chains are challenged right now, and this is made in Italy..."

I advise my friends, if they're purchasing any electronics, like a notebook, you may as well bundle some accessories and spare parts right away, like an extra battery or power supply or the component that's most likely to go bad, because in 5 years when you need it, they'll be sold out.

In fact, in all of those markets I've listed above, I've purchased something, unbox it at home, only to find out that it is lacking accessories, isn't a complete set, or part of it is unfit for purpose, and in fact the manufacturer just gets things onto store shelves while incomplete, so they can sell you more things out of their catalog [iPhones without chargers; shipping beta software...]

I just finished carefully cleaning the sponge filter on my vacuum cleaner. One day I'll visit their website to see if there are any spare accessories still available for it. Good luck!

ujkhsjkdhf234• 1 year ago

A co-worker was telling about a student he knew who would never do laundry and just constantly buy new clothes while getting rid of the worn ones.

ryandrake• 1 year ago

I knew someone like this back in college, too. Absolutely wild.

TuringNYC2• 1 year ago

> A co-worker was telling about a student he knew who would never do laundry and just constantly buy new clothes while getting rid of the worn ones.

I'm dating myself a little bit here, but when i started my career, we had to wear fancy pants. The pants cost ~80 and dry cleaning was ~8 -- so 10 drycleans were a new pair of pants. Thats not even considering the time-cost of drop-off/pick-up which is especially hard if you have long hours.

So I'd just do a regular wash on the pants, despite warnings that "it would ruin the pants over time." I think if I could have the pants last more than 10 washes, I was already in the green.

Even crazier was how some co-workers would have khakis dry-cleaned. Thank the Lord we now have non-iron technical pants. All my problems have gone away.

monkeyelite• 1 year ago

I’m currently working on a house project that would otherwise cost 20-30k. I am willing to buy and throw away a $500 tool. Now imagine you’re working on a million dollar project (like your son’s international Ivy League education).

josefresco• 1 year ago

Our town has a "swap shop" at the transfer station where people bring in items not quite "trash worthy" to offer for free to the community. It's quite popular.

suzzer994• 1 year ago

In LA you just leave anything you don't want that still has value on the curb and it's gone within a few hours. It's a very efficient system.

jeffwask• 1 year ago

Same in San Antonio.

ghaff5• 1 year ago

Pretty much everywhere. I have a bigger junk haul in process at the moment. But, living well off a busy exurban road well outside of Boston, if I drive or drag something big to the end of the driveway and give it a free sign, it'll be gone within a few hours.

SoftTalker5• 1 year ago

Even better, put a price on it, then it will be "stolen" for sure.

karaterobot• 1 year ago

College students may have no concept of how much stuff costs when their parents buy it. But to be fair, I'm in my 40s, and throw out a lot of expensive stuff too. When you're moving house, you're often tired and anxious, and thinking more about the burden of hauling crap around than you are with the price of replacing it. For me, I actually appreciate the forcing function imposed by the size of a moving van or a storage space, it works better than Marie Kondo to help get rid of stuff I've accumulated. I may believe the underlying reasons justify my behavior, but I can't judge anyone else for doing the same thing on the biased assumption that their reasons are less defensible.

dgunay• 1 year ago

I had a bad habit of accumulating stuff that had some abstract value (may come in handy in the future, is a good deal, etc), and letting go of a lot of it was hard in part because of guilt surrounding environmentalism. Even something that I had no attachment to whatsoever felt extremely difficult to get rid of because it needed to be disposed of ethically. The idea "you can't save the rainforest if you're depressed"[0] was helpful to me in breaking out of this mentality.

[0] https://www.strugglecare.com/struggle-care#:~:text=You%20Can...

bluGill10• 1 year ago

I have realized that I won't give things up and so I avoid getting things without some surety that I will really want it around for decades. There are a lot of neat toys in the world that I honestly wouldn't have time to enjoy them all anyway so better to focus on ones I really will enjoy.

morkalork• 1 year ago

Here's a lucky bastard who managed to snag a Herman Miller Aeron chair for $10 off a student moving out: https://www.reddit.com/r/OfficeChairs/comments/1kvcr18/it_fi...

I'm only a little jelly.

sokoloff2• 1 year ago

I spent a little time chasing broken Aerons (often a bad gas strut ($30) or a bad seat ($125-160)) and selling them onward fixed for $350-400 at the start of COVID. A broken Aeron would go for $100-150 (very occasionally free) and people were buying working ones like crazy as remote took off.

I can’t say it was a great return on my time, but it did give me something to do and I ended up with a little pocket money and 6 Aerons for the family and our guest room computer desk.

If you want to do this, look for ones with a bad strut (or set a marketplace alert for Aerons under $150). They’ll seem really broken to most people, so they sell cheap, but it’s a pretty easy fix (just needs a HUGE pipe wrench* and a $30 strut [and optionally, a $20 set of Rollerblade wheels]).

* or a large pipe wrench and a black pipe “cheater” to fit over the handle.

ourmandave• 1 year ago

The holy grail would be a discarded thumb drive with somebody's bitcoin wallet.

James_K• 1 year ago

It is rather depressing to be reminded of the scale of cultural shift that needs to take place in order for us to live even somewhat sustainably. I get what the degrowth people are on about, now. It certainly seems that we should do more with less.

nappy-doo• 1 year ago

I went to the local state school, and had an apartment off campus. At the end of the school year, we'd go dumpster diving, and get all the stuff thrown out. We would take orders from people before going – generally things like TVs, VCRs, tapes, books for classes, etc.

In the first dumpster, you should get a couple of backpacks, rucksacks, and a broom handle (to aid in digging). We'd find all kinds of things. Books we'd resell, lots of porn, lots of perfectly good clothing. It was great.

The best thing we ever found was a giant projection TV (it was the 90s) outside a frat. We took it home, and it turned out the TV had been rained on, and a few discrete components needed to be fixed in the low-voltage section. A couple trips to Radio Shack, and we had a massive frat TV (it was a pain to move it). We went back to the frat a couple of days after we had fixed it, and asked them for the remote. They chased us off.

Dumpster diving in college towns is definitely something the townies do.

bryanmgreen• 1 year ago

So many campaigns for recycle… but not enough on the two more important pieces - Reduce and Reuse.

Over the years I have refurbed some furniture which is a fun hobby in addition to being environmentally helpful.

I think it’s also worthwhile to pay for higher quality items that are made well and last. A nice pair of leather boots can get repaired for minimal cost and mine have lasted over a decade of very hard wear.

bluGill10• 1 year ago

Most of the things on the list look like things most people would choose to have. Maybe a cheaper version, but few would choose to do without some version of the thing.

dml21354• 1 year ago

I remember that my school rented out mini-fridges to students. It was about $150 to rent a dingy, used fridge for the year. The cost to buy a similar fridge was about $100. So of course, students would buy fridges, then discard them at the end of the year. Piles and piles of mini-fridges.

sokoloff2• 1 year ago

That sounds like a terrible plan on your school’s part (which is your point, I know).

Rent them for $95 for the year and the school probably makes more money and definitely creates less waste and less inconvenience for students.

dml21354• 1 year ago

Honestly I don’t remember the exact price so I may be exaggerating the cost disparity… but I am not exaggerating the pile of fridges so the disparity was certainly there.

SoftTalker5• 1 year ago

My school did that too, but the rental was substntially cheaper than the cost of buying one. There was a deposit too, to encourage returning them, which may have encumbered more money than a new one cost but if you returned it clean it was cheaper than buying and you didn't have to deal with it over the summer.

Mini-fridges are so cheap now it probably doesn't make much economic sense to rent one.

jerome-jh• 1 year ago

The rich have too much money. Period.

DaSHacka• 1 year ago

Well, that's kinda what being "rich" means...

matthewowen• 1 year ago

I live near UPenn. Some locals call the end of the academic year "Penn Christmas". I definitely see some resentment, but having made an international move in my life I have sympathy for it. You need to buy things to live, shipping that stuff when you move away is often very expensive and time consuming, so you condense your life down to a few suitcases and do the best you can.

albedoa• 1 year ago

"Penn Christmas"

There is a Wikipedia article for the Allston (Boston) version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Day_(Boston)

bigyabai• 1 year ago

There's something perniciously funny seeing a yellowed Art of the Deal at the top of the giveaway bin. Really, no takers?

mindslight• 1 year ago

The good stuff is in June when Boston College and other dorms move out for the year. The crap in Allston in September is from yearly tenants in off campus housing, was likely already second hand at least once, and is riddled with bugs. I guess Allston has gentrified, but I assume that just means the bed bugs now have credit cards too.

The weirdest thing about the original article is the author. Like yeah, you can get some great stuff in the trash. People value money wildly differently, and some people throw out practically new stuff. It boggles the mind. But it also boggles the mind that the author is still so focused on the retail prices of marked up "luxury" stuff, like they're still just solidly wed to the consumerist mindset. The used/dirty/soggy whatever can be fantastic, but it's certainly not worth anywhere close to its original retail price, especially accounting for your time to find, haul, clean, etc and how much comparable non-"luxury" brands would cost.

KennyBlanken• 1 year ago

In a city I lived in bedbugs were common enough that the health department spends all weekend on major move-out dates tagging furniture with bedbug PSAs.

rconti• 1 year ago

It seems like move-out day would be the great volume of stuff with the lowest likelihood of bed bugs.

madcaptenor• 1 year ago

As a Penn grad student I definitely looked at the piles of stuff the undergrads threw out hoping I could get something good from them. (I don't recall if I ever did.)

foobarian• 1 year ago

As undergrad students in the 90s we couldn't forage after moveout day, but we did get tons of cool stuff from the CS building loading dock outbound trash heap. My God they were getting rid of some really strange 70s gear. One time we grabbed an old rackmount tape drive - it was enormous. We disassembled it for fun and the thing I remember the most was the cooling fan. It was a squirrel cage blower driven straight from mains power and it blew so hard you could not keep your hand on the exhaust. On. A. Tape. Drive.

anyonecancode• 1 year ago

Once upon a time, this was a thing for pretty much the entire city of New York:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Day_(New_York_City)

moralestapia• 1 year ago

Amazing!

nick__m• 1 year ago

It's still that way in Québec:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Day_(Quebec)

yieldcrv• 1 year ago

Once the economic depression of 1873 was over, more housing was constructed, dropping the price of housing down, and subsequently people had less need to move as often.

oh there's precedent for this solution, what a concept

linkjuice4all• 1 year ago

The real Penn Christmas miracle was getting used tech (laptops/tablets/mp3 players/etc) that was export-controlled. Some students legally couldn’t bring that stuff back to their country and didn’t have time to sell it.

BeFlatXIII2• 1 year ago

How thorough were the customs inspections? Seems like an easy thing to sneak out.

joshvm• 1 year ago

Having been in this situation a few times as an adult, it's a mixture of stressful and cathartic figuring out exactly what's worth keeping, storing or giving away.

The best approach I've found is to standardize packing into 60L industrial Euro crates. They're inexpensive, very strong, practically waterproof (will survive both puddles and rain) and you can even air freight them at close to $100/box if the contents weigh under 32kg. Most of the expense in shipping is volume and people massively underestimate how much they own. If you can keep things compact and dense, ground/sea freight is inexpensive if you don't have to do it very often and there is no practical weight restriction.

Furniture only makes sense if you can re-claim 80+% of the void space in items like shelves, or if it completely flat packs, and if the cost of re-acquisition would be high. Shipping companies usually have minimum billable volume (say 2 cubic meters). I was able to send an apartment's worth of contents in the same volume that a couch would occupy.

For everything else, either buy quality used things that you can sell without much depreciation, or cheap used things that you don't mind thrifting afterwards.

dfxm122• 1 year ago

I get leaving tables behind, but why so much shoes/clothes? I used to live near an Ivy league school and this was a thing there too, but it was all furniture. People weren't throwing things away that fit in a carry on (unless they were knock-offs, I guess)!

ted_dunning• 1 year ago

Your last sentence is the answer. These kids are buying so much it won't fit into a carry on.

Americans buy, on average, over 50 items of clothing per year. Older people buy less, younger people buy more.

The result is too big to carry. "Omnia mea mecum porto" is from a very long time ago.

ghaff5• 1 year ago

Yeah, for me, lightening the load is only about clothing to the degree that I've accumulated too much over time and there's a bunch I just don't wear. It's not recent purchases unless something just didn't work out for some reason.Having to basically move back into the house because of a kitchen fire though and some furniture definitely won't come back in because I had it essentially because I had it. But don't really use it effectively or it's too bulky.

elzbardico2• 1 year ago

And the funny thing is that for all that money they are usually terribly badly dressed. Thousand dollar outfits that make you look like a clown.

cogogo• 1 year ago

Boston is a town with a ton of students and many of them live in Allston. Leases are almost all 1 yr starting Sept 1st. It’s called “Allston Christmas” because of all the goodies left on the curb.

AdmiralAsshat• 1 year ago

Not surprising. I remember being an undergrad when my BA was ending. I was out-of-state, my nearest relative was several hours away, and I basically only had enough space to pack up from my room whatever could fit in my car. I don't think I threw out much, but there were definitely some things that were resigned to the bin because I simply didn't have anywhere else to put them. For example, I'm pretty sure I threw out a cheap but perfectly functional blender (maybe in the $40 range). The reason being: what was I going to do with it? My parents had a blender; whoever I was staying with in the short-term had a blender; if I wanted to mail it back home I'd probably pay more in shipping costs than the cost of the blender; so what purpose was there to hang onto it?

It was also a surprising PITA to get someone to take my gently-used mattress. Most places (Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc) didn't want it, which I can understand. I know several of my roommates ended up just dumping theirs. I called around some churches and they finally put me in touch with a family that lived in a trailer park nearby who were happy to come and collect it. I let them survey pretty much everything else in my room that I hadn't already packed up at that point as well and take what they wanted--the bed frame, some lamps, etc.

UncleOxidant2• 1 year ago

maybe the Uni could arrange with thrift stores to come in around the end of the Spring semester and collect used items they think they can sell to the incoming students in the fall?

neilv3• 1 year ago

Some universities (or student groups) run stores or donation centers just to pass furniture from one class to the next.

bityard2• 1 year ago

The reason you can't give away a mattress is bedbugs. If you know what to look for, a bedbug-ridden mattress can easily be avoided. And you can also buy protective breathable covers that keep the bedbugs either in or out. But most people don't know what to look for, or don't want the liability of being wrong.

bcrosby95• 1 year ago

We gave away our mattress to a non profit. They sent some people out to inspect it ahead of time. They said needed it ASAP for someone who was moving away from an abusive relationship - it was supposedly going directly from our house to the place she was being put up.

hn_throwaway_992• 1 year ago

It was also a surprising PITA to get someone to take my gently-used mattress.

Is it really that surprising? Places don't take a used mattress for the same reason they don't take used underwear - you may say it's "lightly used", but once it's out of the box, that guarantee is gone, and a used mattress is something that hardly anyone would be willing to buy. That is especially true since you can now buy a brand new mattress incredibly cheaply.

I used to do a lot of volunteering at a thrift store, and it was really eye opening to see which things had residual value. Some examples:

1. Unless it was a desirable higher-end piece (think something like a known midcentury modern company), we usually hated getting furniture. It's big, bulky, and unless it's like a showpiece, most people go to Ikea to buy cheap furniture.

2. You can barely give away china these days. We would get beautiful, perfect condition full sets of china, mark it down to like $30 for an entire 12-place set, and it would just sit there.

3. Most fast fashion is worthless (though I don't know, maybe the demise of Temu and Shein will change this). Nobody is going to pay even like $6 for a piece of clothing (which is essentially like the cost just to store/sort/sell stuff) when new it's like $10.

4. Electronics/small home appliances also depreciate especially quickly.

Our biggest money makers were mid-to-high end clothes, jewelry and bags, quality shoes, and artwork/home decorations.

It was also eye opening to see how many people donated plain garbage to assuage their guilt. Like I used the "people don't take used underwear" as an example, but yes, people would still donate it (which sucks - all that does is add to the costs of the charity you're donating to).

creer6• 1 year ago

Thrift store pricing: It's disappointing.

You can barely give away china these days. [...] it would just sit there.

Most times I look, it's overpriced. Very much so. Price lower. Obviously?

Most fast fashion is worthless [$6 for a piece that's new for $10]

Well duh? Price lower? Obviously?

Around here it feels like thrift stores have not noticed the revolution in pricing for online, delivered, made-in-china-but-not-only. What's happening? They seem desperate for the occasional buy by someone who doesn't know any better? Not cool. And a completely self-inflicted defeat. I see local stores receive floods of donations, have significant foot traffic - and priced to make soooo few sales.

Do they really make more money by shipping most donations to other countries - that they can ignore the reality of online, mass market, fast fashion pricing? How come these other countries can pay more money still - to compensate for the shipping cost? What's going on? Are these stores a front for something else? Some other way to pay the lease and employees?

Analemma_• 1 year ago

You can barely give away china these days. We would get beautiful, perfect condition full sets of china, mark it down to like $30 for an entire 12-place set, and it would just sit there.

Chinaware sucks to actually use: it can't go in the dishwasher, it's smaller and less convenient than normal-sized dishes, and so on. Even if you want to spend lots of money on dishes, you're much better served buying nice stoneware at Crate and Barrel or something, it looks as good or better and is actually useful. Chinaware generally just sits there and takes up space; I wouldn't take any even if it was free.

And the thing is, it's not really a tragedy that nobody bothers with chinaware anymore. Chinaware was only ever a "keeping up with the Joneses" status-signalling purchase to show you'd made it as a middle-class household, and it's been replaced by other goods for that purpose. We're not losing out on some kind of heritage tradition here, it's just one set of shallow luxury goods getting replaced with another.

neilv3• 1 year ago

I spent many years curb-shopping student discards in Cambridge, MA. It's not only in late May, but year-round. By convention, many people just set out reusable things beside the trash on the curb, and the things disappear.

I think much of it is a combination of jet-setting affluence, and of international students, who might not be affluent, but who can't take it with them, and are too busy to sell it.

The sad thing to a curb-shopper is the knowledge that most on-campus discarded stuff never makes it to the curb, other than "Allston Christmas".

The other day, when there were a lot moveouts happening (when you can actually "pahk yah cah in Hahvahd Yahd") someone had set up some large donation bins, so hopefully the things are going to someone who will use it, rather than to a landfill. (The city now also runs year-round clothing donation receptacles.)

Earlier this month, I helped this person who needed help getting a nice piece of furniture from the curb into their car. She capped off gushing about the nice find, with "Harvard students!"

What restores a little of your faith in humanity is when people will go out of their way to donate, or to put something carefully on the curb with a sign, when it would be easier just to toss it into the dumpster.

naet• 1 year ago

I lived near UC Berkeley for many years and I would often take a random afternoon to drive around the student neighborhoods near the end of the term to snag a couple free things like air fryers, microwaves, or TVs for free. People would reliably leave them out on the curb for the taking as they packed up to head back home, since they weren't practical to take on a flight or long journey. I'm sure some people tried listing them on craigslist for a couple days when they started packing and then abandoned them instead when nobody bit, and some people probably didn't even care to go through that motion or waited too long to pack and realize they couldn't bring it.

Never went through the dumpster or got any "luxury" goods (probably wouldn't even recognize them if I saw them), but my wife did randomly bring home a pair of nice looking speakers that ended up being around $700 if bought new. I'm sure some wealthy international students do throw away some expensive stuff and not think twice about it. I actually did the opposite and tossed some of my own bulk items in a student dumpster once which was probably a violation of some kind although I didn't see any signs to say otherwise.

I saw some decently nice tvs or other things that could have potentially been resold by someone looking to do that, but I was only interested in taking something I would personally use.

throwforfeds2• 1 year ago

My friend is a professor at NYU and, to make a long story short, one of his international students messed up their scheduling and tried to get my friend to change their final meeting time because his flight home for the summer cost >$10k and he didn't want to change it. Like, that's clearly an international first class flight, for a 19 year old. My ass was lucky to catch a $20 bus that may or may not catch on fire.

That's all to say, I'm guessing for many of these rich kids they're not thinking twice about throwing out a table or some slides their parents bought for them.

gruturo• 1 year ago

Weird. An international first class ticket is extremely easy to change, likely at no additional cost - so he'd lose approximately 0$ out of those 10k. It's a phone call, and if you're a 19yr old whose family can afford it, most likely it isn't even you having to make that phone call.

throwforfeds2• 1 year ago

I'm guessing he didn't want to tell his family he messed up, his professor was unavailable for the rest of the summer, and he might get a low grade in the class for missing the final project. He had been given 2 months to schedule this final review.

ElevenLathe• 1 year ago

I went to a state school but end of the year I would walk through all the dorms and collect text books to sell back to the bookstore. They were all worth at least a dollar and there was a chance you'd get a pricey one.

csense• 1 year ago

All kinds of nice things appear in a college dorm's dumpster on move-out day -- especially if said college attracts a lot of non-local or international students who will be flying. Selling takes a lot of time and planning ahead, shipping also requires time (you have to box it up and take it to the post office or FedEx) -- and it might cost more than the item's worth.

When I was in college I found a perfectly working DVD player in a dumpster on move-out day, and I wasn't looking particularly hard -- only casually glancing at the most obviously visible items in the nearest dumpsters I happened to walk by. I could easily imagine finding $thousands worth of items if you go to a big campus with the right student demographics on the right day and systematically search all the dumpsters.

sleepybrett• 1 year ago

I used to live in some apartments near the university of washington. Every june whole apartments worth of stuff would end up in the 'free pile' whenever the international students would move out.

One year I pulled a gaming PC with a current gen nvidia card in it, two current playstations and six current xboxen out of the pile (straight to ebay, minus the gaming PC which I gifted to a friends kid) along with some household items (pots and pans, some of that wire storage shelfing) that I still use.

Hell my current apt which is across town from the university (though I guess seattle u is semi close...) I still see the same kind of stuff end up in the free pile at the beginning of just about every summer and the end of some semesters. I can't tell if it's kids that communing outside of the neighborhood to school or potentially some 'travelling nurses' working at the nearby hospital, but the eating is good.

jccalhoun2• 1 year ago

The dollar amount may be higher but the phenomenon is nothing new. In undergrad I remember scavenging a bunch of lumber to make a bad frame. In grad school the end of the spring semester was a time for me to go drive around the undergrad apartments looking for stuff.

bityard2• 1 year ago

I live near a major university town and one of the highlights of my year is move-out week. At dusk, a friend and I go dumpster diving at the apartments around campus. You definitely wear gloves and clothing you don't mind throwing out afterward, but MOST of the garbage is cleaner than you'd think.

Usually the trash is pretty well picked-through by the time we get to it, but every year, we drive off with a pickup truck full of stuff. Common items I typically find are: clothing (especially coats), backpacks (which sometimes have money and other valuables in the small pockets), food (unopened), bathroom supplies, cleaning supplies, notebooks, bins/organizers, tools, sports equipment, batteries (new in box), etc. Oh, and alcohol. So much alcohol.

There is lots more that I typically don't bother with because I have no use for, things like furniture, vacuums, lamps, "items of a personal nature," etc. Basically anything you can imagine fitting into an apartment, you are likely to find in the dumpster.

For some reason, I have yet to find a laptop or anything particularly in line with my other hobbies, but the general day-to-day stuff is quite plentiful if you're willing to take the time to find it, and possibly get a little dirty.

neilv3• 1 year ago

For some reason, I have yet to find a laptop

On the curb, I've found over 100 total tower/desktop PCs/Macs, countless printers/monitors/televisions, and even a few game consoles, but I don't recall any laptops nor smartphones.

I was thinking either laptops&phones are too easy to move, to easy to sell, they don't last long on the curb, or they're small enough to get tossed into the trash.

If you were opening trash bags in the dumpsters, and still didn't find any, I guess they're too easy to keep/move/sell.

madaxe_again• 1 year ago

I went to the university of Durham in the U.K. - I paid my tuition, rent, and living expenses every year by just collecting the stacks of discarded textbooks, and selling them on at a 30% discount from the university bookshop’s prices to the next year’s undergrads. My only cost was paying (cheap) rent on a house under a railway bridge that I turned into an amazing fire hazard over the summer.

Best (in terms of mass to value) dumpster dive find I had was a box of laser rubies.

sfink2• 1 year ago

For some reason, I have yet to find a laptop

Seems straightforward enough. Laptops are portable and contain things of personal value (configuration, if nothing else!). Or just might -- if you're dumping stuff because you don't want to deal with it, so why would you deal with searching through your laptop to look for photos or incriminating messages or whatever? Or opening it up to pull the hard drive? That's work!

Formerly, they'd also be as much value to the owner the week after classes end as they were the week before, but maybe that's changed now? Do people rely only on phones and not use laptops for anything other than school?

nmeofthestate• 1 year ago

Friend of a friend works in student accommodation (UK). Apparently Chinese students leave massive amounts of high end stuff when they go home. They're from rich families and can't/have no need to transport the stuff back to China.

JamesSwift• 1 year ago

I was stationed out in Monterey CA for a while and the combination of wealthy civilians + loads of young temporary military personnel (+ a fat BAH for some of them) led to an absolute treasure trove of craigslist finds if you had access to a pickup truck.

I did my part by leaving a nearly brand new king size mattress (got married and had my wife move in 2 months before moving away from the area) as well as multiple items that a Rent-A-Center failed to pick up before we left (large sectional sofa, dining room table + chairs).

kccqzy• 1 year ago

When I was a freshman and sophomore I bought a lot of second hand furniture at ~70% off from people who were graduating and moving. I thought I would do the same when I graduate, but no, it took a certain type of personality and executive function to deal with disparate buyers, haggling prices and scheduling pickups amidst the busy graduation and commencement season. Not everyone could properly get rid of their fancy furniture. If one grows up in a middle class family where money isn't tight, often throwing it all away is just the easy way to avoid hassle and the mental toll.

I have found that this persists in work too. For some people it is way more difficult to deal with a larger number of simpler tasks than a smaller number of sophisticated tasks, while for others there is basically no observable difference.

the__alchemist• 1 year ago

I wonder what we need to do to make buying and selling used items convenient. My experience has been that the bid/ask spread is too large, and liquidity too low to be practical. And if you're giving something away, no one will take it. No explanation; just observations. I want to not throw things out and buy new, but haven't found a workflow that works. (I'm in an apt building near the one listed in the article; more of a young-professionals/mixed vibe though.)

For transient university housing as in the article, I imagine the dynamic shits due to the volume of temporary items being cycled through.

jghn• 1 year ago

Every time I've tried either selling something or giving something away, I came away finding that the hassle was totally not worth the time. Which obviously is easy to happen with giving something away. But even when selling, if for instance I sell something for $50 but put in an hour or two of my time, I'm still in the hole.

ericmay• 1 year ago

Whenever we give things away, we do one of two things:

  1. We donate to an appropriate organization that tends to specialize in donations for the specific items we're donating. I.e. work clothing for university students.
  2. We list an item for free, but pickup only. Confirm a day/time, and then said item is set outside for the individual to pick the item up. If they don't show, or something happens no big deal.

jldugger2• 1 year ago

when selling, if for instance I sell something for $50 but put in an hour or two of my time, I'm still in the hole.

I used to sell via gameflip and glyde, and that was pretty efficient; five minutes cataloging and listing the game and five minutes putting it in an envelope before my daily mail run. But these companies keep tripping over payment processing -- gameflip lost paypal, probably due to an infestation of scammers in the digital goods market?

So now I just post for sale ads on an internal company forum. But every time I come to the same conclusion. Having to personally deliver these flips the script. I seriously wonder if donating to a public library has a better ROI. They get a loanable asset, and I get a tax writeoff? But there seems to be many variables on how the writeoff is valued.

edit: or I need to set up coordination destination. Like "pickup at board game night only."

jazzyjackson2• 1 year ago

Yeah liquidity is a big one. last I moved out of a house I didn't want to bother finding a buyer for my furniture (probably been worth 500 total max even waiting for someone who wanted to pay) so I ended up putting it in my yard the last day of my lease with a free sign and posted a photo to craiglist, dining table chairs office furniture... And that's the day I learned a 7 foot sleeper sofa can fit comfortably in the back of your standard family minivan

Who wants to spend their last month in their house without a dining table? So the amount of time between making it available and "I need it gone" is very slim indeed

freetime22• 1 year ago

When I moved, I sold some furniture with a local consignment shop [1]. I sent them pictures, and they gave me estimates. They even sent a truck to pick up the furniture, with the transportation cost coming out of the final sale proceeds.

It couldn’t have been simpler, and they mailed me a check when the items finally sold after about a month.

[1] https://thehomeconsignmentcenter.com/location/

sydbarrett74• 1 year ago

freecycle.org

elif• 1 year ago

Look into "buy nothing" groups. We have given away about a dozen things we once cared about with like an 80%+ certainty it's not going to a landfill.

Even if someone is breaking the rules and just refinishing furniture to resell, to be honest that benefits me because they are motivated to come get things fast, and my goal of not making trash is not only satisfied, but there is surplus enjoyment from being part of creating new value in an item.

nkrisc• 1 year ago

I do the same. We list it for free pickup on Freecycle or similar sites. If someone is just reselling it I honestly don’t care. All I care is that it’s not in my house, I didn’t spend any time or money, and someone is likely using it.

bobthepanda• 1 year ago

also, the dump is not free, and dump pickup especially is not free.

anigbrowl• 1 year ago

We don't have to do anything, Craigslist already exists and works great. I've bought stuff from departmerting college students, the transaction is as simple as showing up and saying 'hi, are you X? Great, here's $50, thanks for The Thing'.

Some people just cannot be bothered, and if they're wealthy they simply may not care about concepts like wasting money - doubly so if they grew up with money and have never had to ration it for basic items. This isn't a market in search of a tech solution, any more than people who put out working items on the street with a sign saying 'free' because they don't want to go through the hassle of conducting a transaction for pocket money.

XorNot• 1 year ago

Literally giving things away for free frequently costs more in time and sanity though.

Putting it out on the street is the least effort approach, but rightly most municipalities don't want unwanted items to persist their either.

bluGill10• 1 year ago

My wife often sells things we are done with. If half the people who arrange a meeting to buy something show up she is doing well. Many times she has listed something for $10, has someone say "I really want this, will you take $20" - then not show up to meet. (we are always first come first serve, but if the first person offers $20...)

My wife doesn't have a regular job so she has some time to deal with this - but her time is still valuable (there are plenty of other things do to - I don't see how dual income families can raise kids!)

MiddleEndian• 1 year ago

My experience trying to give stuff away online (or sell it for cheap) is similar to this Simpsons meme featuring vanishing Spock: https://i.ibb.co/0Vs9qHqm/116609166-3570105309667743-4078949... ... Although for the same reason, it's super easy to buy used stuff online just by offering the asking price and actually showing up.

Nowadays I leave unwanted but usable stuff by the trash room in my building, usually somebody will grab it, and if not it will get removed by the cleaning people eventually. I got a nice roller suitcase that way myself lol

freetime22• 1 year ago

In Japan “recycle shops” are ubiquitous. There’s a chain called “Off House” that will buy just about anything, and also operates branches that specialize in used books, electronics, outdoor goods, etc. There’s another chain called “2nd Street” with a few branches nearby. They’ll appraise your items on the spot - usually takes 15 minutes or so during which I’ll browse the store - and pay cash. They typically buy for about 50% of what they intend to sell for, which is quite fair IMO.

I can think of about 10 locations off the top of my head in my city, and there are probably more than that. I never throw away things that are in a usable condition - better to get a little money back and it feels better knowing someone else might use it. I’ve also bought quite a bit of 2nd hand stuff - bikes and skis for the kids, clothing, etc.

When living in the US I used to make use of a local consignment shop. Pawn shops are also pretty ubiquitous, although I never actually tried selling anything there. And there’s always Goodwill and Salvation Army if you just want to conveniently get rid of stuff and avoid waste. Goodwill (and other charities as well, I assume) can write you a donation receipt that you can use to claim a tax deduction (although I never bothered).

canpan• 1 year ago

The shops are the game changer. Theoretically you could earn more doing online auctions. But why the hassle?

I sell my old PC hardware, but there are shops for books, games, clothes, furniture, instruments, alcohol?!

phil21• 1 year ago

I wish this existed in the US. I have plenty of somewhat esoteric stuff that a generalized post to FMB or CL may take weeks or months to even give away to someone who knows what it is/has a use for it. And the cost of shipping + eBay marketplace fees make it just totally not worth the hassle for the wider market.

Right now I have an antique deli slicer with a brand new blade that needs a little TLC but should operate at least another 100 years once fixed up a bit. A dental clinic autoclave I just don't have room for, a bunch of old IBM model M keyboards, and a slew of various mid-range electronic items that still have plenty of use in them but not a lot of monetary value. I'd give them all away to a decent home - but I don't really have the time to spend on packaging them up and/or the items are too bulky to consider shipping. This is just a few things that have been sitting around my house collecting dust for at least a year.

Pawn shops here are pretty useless and Goodwill/SA are simply not interested in the vast majority of the items I have to get rid of. I'd love to de-clutter, but can't really bring myself to toss perfectly good stuff so it's down to pestering every guest I have over to take things if they have a use.

I can set it out for trash collection in the alley here and 9 times out of 10 someone will take it if it's a mainstream and obviously decent item. That or has value as scrap metal. But for the weirder stuff it's not a great method to ensure it won't just be scrapped and/or trashed as soon as a scrapper decides it's not worth their trouble.

fmstephe• 1 year ago

In New Zealand, where I live, the Salvation Army (charity second hand shop) offers a service where they will come and clear out a house for you. They will take everything and dispose of the trash and keep and resell anything of value.

This is really used to clear out houses of deceased relatives etc.

This doesn't resolve your problem of generally selling your used goods conveniently. But I always found it to be a really interesting service. Because it identifies that there is real practical difficulty in simply giving away a lot of goods, and the solution is to provide this complete service to make it easier.

dataflow• 1 year ago

I wonder what we need to do to make buying and selling used items convenient

I'm not sure how feasible it is in practice. In theory I think you'd at least need the following to be possible:

(a) Being able to leave them literally outside your door in a manner that anyone in the neighborhood can see (basically impossible without additional technology for a lot of people)

(b) Being able to put them literally outside your door without causing issues (also impossible for many people due to everything from fire codes to simply lack of room or your own potential of tripping on them)

(c) Being able to make sure that anyone who takes them pays for them appropriately (nobody is going to keep an eye on them for free)

ufmace• 1 year ago

In my opinion, never mind that stuff, it's enough of a hassle just getting good quality pictures of the thing, figuring out exactly what it is and what a wild guess of a "fair" price would be, writing up some sort of description, dealing with questions and appointments from potential customers. It makes it not worth the time and bother unless you're pretty sure you can get a few hundred bucks for it. Modulo of course how rich or poor you are right now and how much free time you have etc.

m463• 1 year ago

I think craigslist is pretty close. That said it takes time and effort, and a little bit of opening up to the general public.

I remember doing a garage sale before moving years ago. We sold some stuff, but in reality nobody wants to give you anything for your stuff. I still remember a guy who came, pushing his way over asking brusquely, "Do you have any jewelry, watches, iphones or ipads?". When I said no, he left just as abruptly as he came.

Now goodwill is our preferred way. We found it is hard to get any sort of tax credit to work, so we don't even bother with receipts anymore.

sylens• 1 year ago

In my experience it’s sellers who have an unrealistic view of what their stuff is worth. When I sell on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, I price my stuff to sell quickly. I’m not trying to recoup my entire investment

gizmo686• 1 year ago

It probably depends on location, but around here, giving stuff away is easy. There are several for profit thrift stores in the area, some of which will let you just drop stuff off for them. There are also several non-profits that will accept donations and write you a receipt you can use for tax purposes. I've also seen collection receptacles in various parking lots (as well as the county dump).

I've been able to get the local branch of Habitat for Humanity to come to me with a truck to pick up some old furniture free of charge. The only downside was that they are not allowed to come into houses, so I was responsible for moving the furniture to the yard.

For buying stuff, the local thrift stores are good, and offer very low prices on everything. The only downside is you actually need to show up, and are limited to the items they have, so it is not an option if you have a specific thing in mind.

darkwizard42• 1 year ago

I honestly find DENSITY is the core problem with getting rid of things easily. I've sold nearly everything from a 6-person sectional to a small 10 pack of Chinese tea and everything sells OR you can find a home for it on the local Buy Nothing. Usually I get pickups within 1-2 days on all these things.

It is a great case for more city style density (even in Brooklyn which is closer to 3-4 story walk-ups)

yodsanklai• 1 year ago

It's pretty sad people throw away stuff when it's possible to give it away to charity. Well, maybe it's not convenient to donate stuff around their universities?

I personally never throw away anything that could be useful to someone. There are organizations around me that accept almost anything.

Tyr42• 1 year ago

I didn't have a car as a student. It would be hard to manage that goal as a student.

dkga• 1 year ago

A few „anthropological“ impressions from this text.

First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination?

Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „gratis - zum mitnehmen“ (free to take with you) and people who want/need come and collect them. Only if anything is really unwanted, you take back and throw away.

Third, I was surprised the author felt bad. A sign that there is unfortunately some stigma in re-using things. She is actually doing very nice work by collecting them and trying to give them a new lease of life for herself or others (she mention she donated some of the items)

thephyber• 1 year ago

College students (undergrads) aren’t full adults yet. They are transitioning from living under the protection of their parents to living on their own.

Throwing away things that could be sold could be a matter of (1) frustration/exhaustion with the end of the semester, (2) no place in their car / plane luggage for extra items, (3) indifference of kids who don’t know the value of a dollar (the Ballenciaga slides are literally the most expensive version of a slide you can buy — I usually get mine for less than $10).

On the street might be a better solution, but in the US you can be fined for littering (“dumping”) if you abandon items on someone else’s property. Lots of local laws in the USA are designed to maintain high property values (while subsidizing the very expensive police departments).

bawolff6• 1 year ago

Throwing away things that could be sold could be a matter of (1) frustration/exhaustion with the end of the semester, (2) no place in their car / plane luggage for extra items, (3) indifference of kids who don’t know the value of a dollar (the Ballenciaga slides are literally the most expensive version of a slide you can buy — I usually get mine for less than $10).

Or you know, them being rational actors who know spending an hour to sell something for $5 is not a good use of their time.

The author did find a couple of allegedly more expensive items, but is also e.g. talking about used pyjama bottoms. How much money do you really think you are going to get for used pyjama bottoms? Is it worth it? Almost certainly no.

slibhb• 1 year ago

Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items? This is very common for example here in Switzerland - you put unwanted things ranging from old kid toys to books to furniture on the sidewalk with a sign saying „gratis - zum mitnehmen“ (free to take with you) and people who want/need come and collect them. Only if anything is really unwanted, you take back and throw away.

It's common in the US too.

sokka_h2otribe• 1 year ago

The students live on campus, so the majority of folks are getting rid of items at the same time. Different than when people live in a city and not everyone is moving at once

coderatlarge• 1 year ago

this is how i furnished my grad school apartment way back when. fellow students helped carry furniture multiple blocks away.

bluGill10• 1 year ago

Every year my city does a clean up day - put anything on the curb and they will take it away (hazardous waste needs to go to a special collection location not the curb). All the scrappers know that day and will be driving around trying to beat the trash trucks to anything good and as a result most of the "trash" doesn't get to the dump.

People do put things on the curb other times of the year, but a dedicated clean up day helps everyone - you know when it is your turn, and the scrappers don't waste gas driving down dead end streets.

amalcon• 1 year ago

First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination?

It's very possible for the cost of transport to exceed the value of the goods, especially if one is flying to one's next destination.

Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items?

This I can't help with. As far as I have seen, this is a common practice everywhere in the northeast US. The police don't always love it, but that doesn't really prevent people from doing it.

baxtr• 1 year ago

How is this something the police are concerned with? I mean municipal authorities, maybe, but police? Wouldn’t be the case in most of Europe at least.

dylan6043• 1 year ago

Who's your target audience for those items left on the curb? Everyone just left town.

Reasoning• 1 year ago

Can confirm it's common in the upper Midwest as well. My college apartment was furnished mostly with stuff we got from curbs. Never heard of the police taking issue with it.

zem• 1 year ago

common practice in san francisco too. i always feel good when i see something that was just taking up space in my house and not being used has been picked up and rehomed.

roadbuster• 1 year ago

Undergraduate tuition at Duke starts at $65,000 USD/year. It shouldn't come at any surprise that a lot of spoiled kids who are funded by the International Bank of Mommy & Daddy are apathetic and wasteful.

From: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...

"The median family income for a Duke student is $186,700. A significant portion of Duke students, 69%, come from families in the top 20% of earners, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Additionally, only 1.6% of students come from low-income backgrounds"

bluGill10• 1 year ago

Undergraduate tuition at Duke starts at $65,000 USD/year.

Does it? I don't know anything about Duke, but a lot of colleges I know of tell your tuition is around that price. However dig deeper and you discover it is almost impossible to not get scholarships thus making the real price cheaper. I know of one school near me that automatically gives everyone a 40% scholarship, then they look at your background to figure out if you qualify for anything more.

MisterTea• 1 year ago

These are people far disconnected from reality and honestly dont give a damn about anything but projecting their wealth. Why else would they spend $400 on something as mundane as slippers? They are shallow and careless.

arcanemachiner• 1 year ago

This is one possible hypothesis, yes.

susiecambria• 1 year ago

The $395 Balenciaga slides really stood out to me, too.

monocasa2• 1 year ago

First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination?

At my wife's alma mater, the way move out in the dorms worked was that you had 24hrs after your last final and then had to be gone. That didn't really leave a lot of time for a lot of people that had maybe two checked bags and a carry on to work with, and had spent the previous time focused on studying for their finals.

xhkkffbf• 1 year ago

I realize that students don't think this way, but they could do a few things before the end of the semester. They usually find the time to get drunk or go to Starbucks for a hit of caffeine.

atonse• 1 year ago

So the solution could be top down:

- give 2-3 extra days for students to move out.

- maybe partner with a few moving/freight companies? you’d bring them a lot of customers and they could provide a good rate.

anal_reactor2• 1 year ago

24hrs after your last fina

Generous. When I was taking part in student exchange I had to be gone from the dorms a week before one of my finals.

jgerrish• 1 year ago

I just got a pair of new shoes to me, previously owned by another. I'm glad they were left behind, different items mean different things to people at different stages of their life.

Like at this stage? I'd love to find a quiet place to run.

But in the meantime, I'm not studying for finals or having a kid. Just buying plant-based mayonnaise like a boring adult and scraping lizard crap out of cages in what some could see as a patronizing metaphorical cholesterol or dendrite decaying act of desperate cleansing against time.

So yeah, if the kids at Duke can buy new shoes and time doesn't matter to them, and there's a high likelihood they'll be reused and it's all by choice? Cool.

Choices are good.

Suppafly• 1 year ago

This happens at every university on move out day, especially if they have a lot of international students that need to fly out of the country.

Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items?

Often they are, but most of the people already have their own stuff and limited space for additional stuff. When I lived in a dorm, anything larger items you didn't want you could put on the 3rd floor lounge area and the school would donate or dispose of them. Any other students were free to take that stuff, but unless you had preplanned to have a truck or uhaul, you could only take so much.

ajb• 1 year ago

Yeah. Given that they all move out on the same day, the most economically efficient way is to organise the reuse collection centrally, as some unis mentioned in the article do.

More generally, it's dumb that it's so much more work to give something away than to trash it - or even buy it in the first place. Our logistics for buying stuff is incredibly efficient, for reusing we're stuck in the 15th century - everything done artisanally (and with free guilt-labour)

p3rls• 1 year ago

The stigma is more about going through peoples' trash and being poor than reusing things. Environmentalism/repurposing etc, as long as its cleanly done, can be pretty high status otherwise.

stego-tech• 1 year ago

Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items?

Boston does this! The locals refer to it as “Allston Christmas”, it takes place every September 1st, and it’s a great time to scavenge furniture and appliances, even computers and electronics.

My big concern remains bedbugs, personally. As a renter myself, I don’t have the facilities to disinfect and kill off any pests that might’ve hopped on between the old apartment and the curb, which narrows my selection considerably. Still, lots of students and locals partake in the yearly turnover tradition and walk away with new room furniture sets!

micromacrofoot• 1 year ago

this is also just where the trash goes for pickup though, and indeed they have extra garbage pickups on moving day

DFHippie• 1 year ago

This is commonplace where I live in Vermont, to the point where sometimes things are taken which you didn't mean to give away. You put "free" on it -- or don't, see above -- put it by the curb, and it's gone within the hour.

There are also plentiful thrift stores which take donations. The profound selfishness of throwing this stuff out rather than passing it on so eventually some person with less can have a better life -- the thrift stores generally are non-profits supporting the homeless, hospices, and so forth -- boggles my mind.

creer6• 1 year ago

So, it's surprising at first, but as others mention, it seems like a roughly functioning system: The students are rushed by the university to move, move, move. They do what they can which is not much for many, who don't yet have their life in order. Buying too much, too expensive, not downscaling in time, etc, why so surprising? Some universities have a decent system in place for temporarily holding that stuff for other students. For the rest, the locals - individuals and business can come and do the sorting.

Same thing happens on Craigslist: You can post an item for sale for a fair price - and it may take days or weeks - or you can post it free and it will gone in hours (to someone who will resell it perhaps but whatever.)

gosub1005• 1 year ago

or you can post it free and it will gone in hours

you'll have a dozen people immediately claim it and ask you to hold it for them, but actually getting rid of the item is another story. maybe 1/4 or less actually take it. I recommend donating to a thrift store (even one of the "evil" ones where the CEO makes $600k) or posting it in proper category, putting $1 for the price, and saying "free" in the item description. As opposed to using CL's "free" category.

mr3martinis• 1 year ago

Many apartment buildings have policies about where trash can be left, including at move out, otherwise there’s always trash around building entrances for the maintenance staff to clean up. Also, the Durham area is pretty suburban, so this apartment complex might not have much pedestrian traffic or even a sidewalk. It’s wasteful, but this is likely the situation.

PunchyHamster• 1 year ago

I've recently moved from apartment that I lived in for 10+ years. I can understand that.

Going thru literally thousands of items (many hobbies, too small apartment in short) and deciding where to pack which and what to throw away is gruelling.

If I had choice (I wanted to get deposit back and not leave a mess), I'd leave most of that after picking the most important items, as a lot of them can be replaced cheap for when (or if ever) I will need those items again.

But

First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc? Why not take with them on to their next destination?

that is just weird (unless food is something that would spoil in few days I guess)

neom5• 1 year ago

The missing part is... those are Valentino's, those are not "Tennis shoes". Now, why did someone throw out those Valentino's? Because nobody who goes to college and wears Valentino would wear those Valentino's, those particular Valentino's pictured, to someone who likes Valentino: are garbage. To your second point, why not give them to someone with less? I would suspect that a young person who is attending Duke University, one of the most exclusive universities in the world, wearing Valentino, a luxury brand that even people who love luxury brands laugh at, gives oh about...mmm.. zero shits for someone who has less than them. Third, you referenced a society that has a sense of egalitarianism, I'd hazard: that society is far removed from the above realities.

gosub1005• 1 year ago

using stereotypes about the rich is about as ignorant as making them about the poor.

scotty793• 1 year ago

You said the word "Valentino", which is meaningless, way too many times for it to be healthy.

bawolff6• 1 year ago

First, why do people throw away tennis shoes, unopened food etc?

Because transport costs more than the item? Especially if you are travelling by plane.

Sure there might be cheaper transport options but the opportunity cost of arranging them quickly dwarfs the value.

Second, why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items?

If you are in a university setting where maybe 500 people are leaving all at the same time, i imagine university admin may not be thrilled at the prospect of cleaning up after this.

directevolve• 1 year ago

I live in Portland. Walk around certain neighborhoods, and you’ll see items out on the street - mostly garbage. Broken couches, broken tables, broken appliances, that sort of thing. Typically, items with remaining utility are exchanged via Goodwill or an online tool like Buy Nothing.

My guess is that the college does not want to allow students to dump their mostly-garbage on the neighbors.

At the same time, wealthy students who will throw out items of value may feel they have better things to do than separate out items to donate. That’s especially true if they wait until the last minute.

Overall, separating items to donate from one’s trash is a way to avoid paying to dispose of trash at the dump and a way to perhaps be charitable or environmentally conscious. I’m not convinced it’s all that effective as an altruistic move. If the college sets up a place to dump for free, I’m not at all surprised many people take advantage of it without another thought.

RajT88• 1 year ago

I do not even live in Portland - I live on the edge of a suburban area where people skew pretty conservative. I see the same thing - people who want to get rid of perfectly good stuff, and do not want it to go to waste. Even I do this occasionally if I cannot be bothered to repair a thing - it goes out a bit before garbage day and is usually soon gone.*

*Unless it is an old non-wide LCD monitor. Nobody wants those...

paulcole2• 1 year ago

I live near Ladds Addition and the free piles are the worst. 90% of it is pure crap that just sits out for weeks.

People put it out to feel good about themselves.

Once I saw a bunch of random wires with a label, “FREE - great for art projects.” It’s like thanks for letting me know I was going to knock on doors until I found the right person to make an offer to.

dzhiurgis• 1 year ago

Those shoes wouldn't be accepted to any op shop for how badly scratched they are.

tmpz22• 1 year ago

I've seen this phenomena at two universities. Its gross, dystopian, and eye-opening... unless you're a student who just went through a bingeful finals week and now have to move at extremely short notice.

1) Usually because they can't take it with them. A lot of students fly home, some don't have drivers license, and/or the cost to ship it third party exceeds the price of the items. It's also laziness, but I pin it mainly on practicality and cost.

2) They do, and at Santa Barbara I saw groups gathering, knowing the move-out days, to pick it up. These were migrants, homeless, and thrifty individuals. A lot of the stuff is still in its original packaging, as the parents of the student bought well intentioned but impractical gifts that never even got opened. A lot of room for better organization, but mostly folks just don't care, they're so caught up with finals and getting home that it's very far back in the list of priorities.

3) Picking through trash is a uniquely de-humanizing experience. Its one of the few things that makes me stop walking even in high-homeless areas like the Tenderloin, because I can't even imagine what it feels like to be picking through trash for items to sell, or particularly foodstuffs.

ghostly_s• 1 year ago

why not just put on the street so that other people can come and collect items?

Leaving it in the "trash" room is the equivalent of this in large apartment buildings ime. Note these reusable items were set aside, not tossed in the dumpster. I would agree the curb is better, where any passerby could take it, but in buildings large enough to have staff on-site that isn't tolerated because it would make the property "look bad."

mynameisash• 1 year ago

Lots of responses to your first two points, and I immediately jumped to your last one:

Third, I was surprised the author felt bad. A sign that there is unfortunately some stigma in re-using things.

Ever since my wife and I got married 20+ years ago, we've had a clothesline, and we are constantly line-drying our clothes, weather permitting. I've had plenty of weird looks and probably even a few comments. I definitely have had the impression that people look down on me for doing so, but weird stigma be damned.

analog31• 1 year ago

I live in Madison WI. Move-out weekend is called Hippie Christmas. Townspeople furnish their own apartments with stuff thrown out by the students.

I visited a friend's apartment, and he described the decor as "a mixture of TarJay and Hippie Christmas."

We also regularly leave stuff by the curb and it gets taken. Conveniently, you leave it out a day or two before trash day, and if it's not taken, then you can throw it in the trash.

keeganpoppen• 1 year ago

personally, i am very not fond of the idea of leaving stuff on the street and then being like “meh not my problem anymore… someone will take it”… could very well be a cultural thing, but it feels very… i won’t fill out an adjective, because i don’t want to cast aspersions, and, besides, am fully open to being off base on this one. it just feels very “the ‘help’ / ‘poors’ will take it”… and for the record im not some sort of populist demagogue— quite the opposite: i was just simply raised with a “take care of your own shit” ethos. no value judgment here, and i understand the arguments contra-… or at least the first few that come to mind. what am i missing? i know this bothers many less than it does me.

justinc8687• 1 year ago

I used to work for a carpet cleaner in Madison, WI. 8/15 was always "hippie christmas" as we'd call it. You'd find all sorts of goodies. One of my friends even found a fully functional moped in a dumpster before. Good times!

ge96• 1 year ago

The dumpersterdiving subreddit is interesting, I see people eating food, me personally no, I can see canned food would be an exception or jar

EEVBlog's dumpster diving videos pulls computers with xeon processors ha

nyc_data_geek1• 1 year ago

This is not limited to academia. The very first computer I ever touched, came out of a dumpster where my father worked at the time. Guess they were undergoing a tech refresh, and this financial institution had some apparently rather lax media destruction policies.

RyanOD• 1 year ago

My older brother was a student at U of Michigan. Back in the late '80s, he salvaged a blue Gibson Destroyer copy from the end of the year purge. We're both still playing guitar to this day.

When I was in college at Michigan State, the local pizza joints (Hungry Howies and Gumby's) had a "collect 10 tabs, get a free pizza" promo going on. Every Wednesday, my roommate and I went to all our dorm dumpsters and came home with 40-50 tabs. We ate free pizza all year.

chneu• 1 year ago

I lived near Oregon State for years after I went there. Every year end we would go to all the dorms with our trucks and tell folks to toss their shit in our truck instead of the dumpsters.

We got tons of high end, brand new electronics. Laptops, desktops, audio equipment, etc. Whatever we didn't keep we would sell.

Kids don't give a shit. Their parents bought all of their stuff and it's just too annoying to deal with moving it. If it won't fit in their car/luggage they won't take it. It's too much effort for them to sell it.

ConanRus• 1 year ago

oi wei why OP complain? why?

meerab• 1 year ago

This is a scene in almost every college dorm. Mom of three college going kid here! There is a mad dash at end to empty out the dorm rooms.

ezconnect• 1 year ago

Wait till he see how Koreans throw away so much usable stuff.

bawolff6• 1 year ago

The first tracks the prices and brands of the items that I kept, donated, or sold. The total value came to around $6,000, not including several items I couldn’t find prices for.

So this person spent several days digging in trash to scavenge items that would be worth a total of $6000 new.

But these aren't new. Many of these items have severe depreciation. Used slippers have poor resale value. Used leggings have poor resale value. Used pillow cases have poor resale value.

[Also saying that a pack of 60 disposable cups cost $18 seems sus to me].

I think there is a realistic question of if instead of doing this the author got a min wage job and spent the same amount of time at it, would they have made more money [presuming they sold all items]. If so, i think we have answered the question as to why people throw this stuff out.

damion6• 1 year ago

You'd be surprised at what you find during moving season. Chinese students for example can't import laptops back home, plus they've had a taste of freedom and can't let them be scanned. In my spare time one summer I was making like $40 an hour with a full time job. $4000 handbag can't be travelled with, sold. Etc

Beijinger• 1 year ago

Why should they not be able to import a laptop or a $4000 handbag?

I, as a non Chinese, have received a used laptop via mail and was not charged tax by customs ("is used...") and I have brought 2000 Euros handbags for friends.

bawolff6• 1 year ago

Yeah, i think the most shocking thing is this person only found 6 grand replacement cost (not actual value) worth of stuff. That sounds shocking low to me.

calmbonsai• 1 year ago

While entertaining, this is nothing novel for anyone who's been to college during move-in/move-out days.

Quite simply, it's not worth people's time/effort to dispose of these items in another manner given the exhibited nature of these events and limited travel (esp. airline) cargo capacity. Most folks are simply making the best use of the economic utilities provided to them.

FWIW, some universities offer convenient "bulk disposal/donation" sites on-campus and some clubs/sororities/fraternities volunteer to help managing the logistics.

paulcole2• 1 year ago

Why Did It Make Me Feel So Terrible?

Because you get too wrapped up in things that don’t really matter at all?

ab_testing• 1 year ago

Good thing she posted. By next year, Duke will remove access to the chute.

ProllyInfamous• 1 year ago

My favorite "digging through the trash" story was twenty years ago, when I discovered dozens of pounds of medical school studyguides (as a then- pre-med, about to begin studying for the MCAT). Literally $thousands$ in textbooks.

Right as I was loading up the last of the Princeton Review™ bullshit, I found the neighbor who was throwing all this nonsense away (as he had just been accepted to a medical school). He told me, with no hesitation, that I should find a different career if I didn't want to be burnt out all the time.

Sage advice, and I wish I had listened (could have saved years of my life; I dropped out after the first year, myself, disgusted by what I then saw forming within US healthcare / ACA).

----

Decades later, I still have several boxes of 1"x3" index cards, which the future doctor had thrown away several thousand of (mostly blank). So-as to not tempt a future pre-med (into matriculating), I burned everything else.

----

If any pre-med is reading this, please feel free to contact me so I can offer my opinions on better alternatives. You probably won't listen (and there certainly are happy physicians), but if you're attempting this career "to help people" and/or "make money," there're hundreds of easier ways to accomplish both.

Aziell• 1 year ago

This really resonated with me. Seeing those things casually thrown away didn't just feel like waste. It felt like some kind of emotion was being tossed out too.

Sometimes the guilt doesn't come from picking something up. It comes from realizing that we're getting used to throwing things away. Not just stuff, but effort, relationships, and even the part of us that once tried to live with intention.

blitzar• 1 year ago

Where are the capitalists? Rent a warehouse (or a distributed network of peoples garages), store from the end of term to start of term and sell it all back to them.

newccount• 1 year ago

The true value of these luxury goods is likely closer to that appraised by those undergrads than by the author - i.e trash. Literally billions of dollars of unsold inventory are burnt and destroyed by Luxury brands to avoid marking them down to their correct market value. Cartier's parent company alone destroyed "400 million GBP" of watches in 2 years[1]. Why would you destroy billions of dollars of merchandise if they were actually worth that. I went down the rabbit hole recently after the LVMH tiktok scandal, and given the nature of modern supply chains and mass manufacturing, i believe the bulk of luxury clothing and accessories are likely made in Asia ( China, Bangladesh ) and Eastern Europe. Then they use various techniques to obfuscate the country-of-origin. I cant shake off the impression that the luxury goods market is mostly smoke and mirrors of artificial scarcity, paid celebrity endorsements and potemkin factories.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/18/richemont-d...

motorest2• 1 year ago

The true value of these luxury goods is likely closer to that appraised by those undergrads than by the author - i.e trash.

The explanation might be simpler than this: as the students are moving out, taking this stuff with them might be prohibitively expensive. They might have liquidated their belongings and, as they have a hard deadline to get out, they need to get rid of things.

Also, it seems the author might have inflated some of the value. The article mentions things like $980 Valentino sneakers, but it also mentions they were worn but wearable. What's the real value of used shoes? Would someone who spends $1k on shoes bother with getting tens of dollars back by selling used sneakers?

Supermancho2• 1 year ago

https://www.thepoke.com/2019/09/29/americans-cant-believe-ka...

Punchline: This is a great idea. It sure would save me a lot of money on coats.

I'm gonna bet used Valentinos, in my size, are still gonna be at least 200$. I'm not a shoes guy, but I know they are worth something.

CrimsonCape• 1 year ago

I got plantar warts from a climbing gym, and now I make all efforts to never get them again. You should be cautious before wearing used shoes and make all efforts to scrub and wash the shoe interior before wearing. Plantar warts is the HPV virus and cannot be killed with antibacterial methods, bleach, and requires like 30 minutes of rolling boil to destroy the virus. The best you can do is physically scrub and rinse the virus away from where it might find skin contact.

To answer your question, the cost of a used shoe could be the cost of time, despair, and anxiety spent treating a transmissible disease.

s1artibartfast• 1 year ago

An alternative is that $1k simply isn't a lot of money to some people. I came to this realization in college when I had some very wealthy housemates who would occasionally treat expensive items as disposable single use

duckmysick• 1 year ago

the LVMH tiktok scandal

Can you tell us more about it?

JR1427• 1 year ago

It's only worth $6k if it can be sold for $6k.

ap11071• 1 year ago

I once helped clean up after a festival in the UK—a relatively small venue that hosted around 10,000 people. It was incredible to see £450 tents, used for just three nights, simply abandoned. Among the most surprising finds were £300 Rab sleeping bags still in their original packaging (apparently the weather had been too warm to need them) and cash scattered across tent floors. Walking through the aftermath felt like browsing an outdoor gear store virtually anything you could want was there, barely used after just three days.

nkotov• 1 year ago

When we immigrated to the US, my siblings and I used to dumpster dive as kids and we were surprised how much stuff Americans were throwing out. Our first year, we managed to get a couple TVs, old game consoles, old computers. All still very usable. We obviously cleaned them up and took them home and managed to get a couple more years of use out of them.

datavirtue2• 1 year ago

I always like buying used older things and restoring them. Especially cars. In comparison, buying new things is really boring to me. There is no hunt.

I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students

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