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

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.

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.

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.

>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.

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.)

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).

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"

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!

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.

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."

> 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.

It's common in the US too.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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).

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?

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.

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

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.

The unofficial motto is "where fun goes to die"

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.

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

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

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.

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).

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)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.