This guy scored a color printer. Others found an iPod and a Tiffany’s pen. Read on to see who found what in the mountain of salvageable goodies Yale students threw to the curb Wednesday, their last day to leave the dorms.
Marty Waters (pictured) jumped into a Dumpster on College Street for the first time Wednesday. A freshman at Southern Connecticut State University, he’d made a mental note of when the Yalies were moving out. He joined dozens of others, from paid recyclers to homeless people, rooting through the piles of refuse surrounding Yale’s dorms:
A foosball table in a High Street Dumpster;
A self-portrait never finished;
Precious drops never drunk.
This Yale senior sat outside Jonathan Edwards College warding off ransackers from his girlfriend’s stuff. “They’ve been going in and out of that Dumpster all day.”
Old Campus, where freshmen live, was by far the biggest jackpot. Gates stood open, welcoming passersby to plunder the supply:
Like this couch, a little worse the wear from being tossed out of a window four stories high,
or the makings of an entire living room. (Students in this building said trash pileup was so bad they couldn’t get out the doorway this morning.)
Crutches anyone?
Need a paddle pool?
This Wesleyan University student, found rummaging through Old Campus trash, is making a documentary called “Operation Ivy: Dumpster Diving at Elite Colleges.” With Wesleyan funds, sophomore Jean Pockrus (pictured) and senior Quinn Hechtkopf (pictured below, yes that’s a pink shower cap) rented a van and bused a dozen students to Yale for move-out day.
The point of the film is to look at how effectively schools recycle refuse, judging by how much salvageable stuff can be found in the trash. Yale, the group’s first stop on a New England tour, wasn’t faring too well: The two already found two iPods, several printers, dozens of lamps, fine jeans and a bubble machine. Not to mention a lot of food.
How do Yale’s piles compare to Wesleyan’s? “It’s the same —‚Äù except I never seen a iPod in the trash at Wesleyan,” said Pockrus, ripping apart garbage bags to pull out unfinished shampoo bottles and a pink yoga mat. “I don’t like the idea of stuff being worthless,” she said. “I get the feeling that they’re irresponsible with their material things.”
(Click here to visit with a trio of New Haven high-schoolers who made off with more modest bargains.)
Why do I keep missing this every year.
I scored an iMac the one year I remembered.