Nonprofit, College Apartment Residents Team Up To Repurpose Household Items

COLLEGE PARK, MD — Across the country, hundreds of thousands of young adults will be lugging suitcases, bags and armfuls of their belongings to college next month. But when the school year ends, many pieces of dorm furniture, decor and related items are simply tossed into the dumpster instead of hauled back home.

A developer of housing located off the University of Maryland campus, in partnership with a nonprofit, aims to alleviate that stress on landfills and recycle-repurpose these items to be reused by people in need in Maryland and surrounding areas.

The Arbor, a 134-unit adaptive reuse apartment community near the University of Maryland, teamed up with Community Forklift to establish a donation and reuse program benefitting people in the DMV. Community Forklift is the DC-area’s nonprofit reuse center for home improvement supplies. They collect donations of new and gently used building materials and home essentials, then make them available to the community at low cost.

Instead of furniture, appliances and household goods being tossed into dumpsters during college move-ins and move-outs, residents can donate items directly from university property with free pickup.

David Kronman, president of Cape Advisors, the developer behind The Arbor in College Park, told Patch that donated items are redistributed locally through Community Forklift.

"Some items are sold at affordable prices through their warehouse in Hyattsville, while others are provided at no cost to households with limited resources through programs like the Home Essentials Program (HELP). That’s how a donated gas range from our project was installed in a D.C. home where the resident had gone six months without a working stove," Kronman told Patch.

During The Arbor’s redevelopment, seven truckloads of material from the renovation was donated - items like kitchen cabinets, appliances, fixtures and furniture, valued at $235,000.

"That inspired us to set up a permanent partnership. When our first residents move in and take part in the program, they’ll be able to donate everyday household goods such as furniture, decor and home essentials that are often left behind during move-out. It’ll be great for those items to get second lives," Kronman told Patch.

Leaders say this is the first partnership of its kind for Community Forklift, where a residential property is setting up an ongoing donation and reuse system.

"When residents move into The Arbor, they’ll be able to schedule donation pickups, as well as partake in annual move-out donations. We’re so proud to be pioneering a program like this in College Park and hope other communities in the area follow our lead," Kronman said.

The program also has been designed around college move-outs, which student housing communities typically see the highest volume of discarded but still usable items.

"The aim is to make it easier for residents to donate those items directly from the property during that period, helping divert usable goods from landfills," Kronman told Patch. "At full occupancy, the model (The Arbor) could divert roughly 85,000 pounds of material annually based on average student consumption patterns."