Tips for a greener, cleaner, and easier Move-Out experience
Working with community partners, Penn offices offer options for off-campus pickups, on-campus donations, and additional curbside trash pickup days aimed at keeping the neighborhood clean and limiting what ends up in the landfill.
4 min. read
Key Takeaways
Off-campus students living between 43rd, 40th, and Chestnut streets, and Baltimore Ave. can go to upenn.liverego.com/refer to schedule a pickup of unwanted items, which will be donated to local non-profits, between May 16 and 31.
In May, curbside trash pickup in this area will happen every Monday and Wednesday, with additional bulk trash pick-up on Friday.
All students can take unwanted items, which will be donated to Goodwill, to various sites on campus 9 a.m.- 8 p.m. until May 14. The Residential Services website has more information.
University of Pennsylvania offices and community partners are continuing concerted efforts to build a cleaner, greener Move-Out experience for students, including a free curbside pickup of gently used items for off-campus students.
How can off-campus students donate unwanted items?
For off-campus move out, Penn Sustainability has contracted with Rego, a data-driven waste diversion platform based in University City , to provide pickups from May 16 to 31 for off-campus students who live between 43rd, 40th, and Chestnut streets, and Baltimore Avenue.
Students can visit upenn.liverego.com/refer to select which items they want picked up—such as bed frames, couches, dressers, tables, desks, electronics, clothing, and home decor—and select their preferred pickup date. Sustainability Director Nina Morris says Habitat Restore or the Philadelphia Furniture Bank will pick up items.
Rego is oriented around helping organizations track their waste management, and Morris says having this data will allow Penn Sustainability track what students are donating and determine if pickups are appropriately timed.
“We’re confident that students want to be good neighbors when moving out, but even with the best of intentions, it’s hard,” says Scott Filkin, a director in the Office of Social Equity & Community. “We want to make it as easy as possible for students to find what they need.”
This is the evolution of Penn’s efforts to keep trash out of local neighborhoods. Morris says an ongoing partnership with the Spruce Hill Community Association has shaped the two goals for the Off-Campus Move-Out program: keeping the neighborhood as clean as possible and keeping donated items local. Filkin explains that this shifted from a small pilot with dumpsters three years ago to an initiative that included an online donation component and multiple pickup days. The online donation pilot was initiated last year and after a success trial where 14,000 pounds of materials were collected and neighborhood complaints were reduced dramatically, the online donation platform is being used again this year.
What about items that can’t be donated?
Students between 40th, 43rd, Chestnut, and Baltimore can leave items not suitable for donation—such as broken furniture—on the curb for pickup every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from May 9 to 30.
Wednesday is the regular trash pickup day in the vicinity, but the City of Philadelphia has also added Monday to its regular pickup schedule for the month of May. Penn is also providing curbside trash pickup on Fridays, which is only for bulk trash, not regular household trash.
Morris says that Penn has also partnered for the past several years with University City District, which checks different blocks for cleanliness and addresses trash hotspots. “It takes a village to keep a village clean, and UCD has played a crucial role in this process,” Filkin says.
Since 2008, Business Services has run PennMOVES, which collects items students won’t take with them, such as furniture, clothes, books, and housewares. Items are donated to Goodwill, which also partners with an e-waste recycler and accepts electronics, functional or not. More information, including lists of items that can and can’t be accepted, can be found on the Residential Services website. This year, any nonperishable foods collected will be donated to Philabundance to be distributed throughout the local community.
Through May 14, on- and off-campus residents can donate items from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Hamilton Village, Lauder, The Quadrangle, Kings Court/English House, and Hill, while donations will be accepted at Gregory and Du Bois college houses through May 19. Large or unwieldy items should be taken to the Hamilton Village location.
Student volunteers who staff the donation locations earn a free housing extension until May19. Jamie Major, dining facilities and project manager, says Residential Services has more than 80 volunteers involved in the effort. During Earth Week, representatives from Residential & Hospitality Services tabled along Locust Walk to share information about on and off-campus Move-Out and distributed reusable bags for students to use when collecting items for donation.
Students should return any Green2Go containers and any reusable items from the dining cafes before leaving campus. These reusable containers are part of a closed-loop system designed to reduce waste—and keeping them in circulation makes a difference. Containers can be quickly rinsed and returned to any Green2Go + Reuzzi drop-off location in Penn dining cafés, including Hill House, Kings Court English House, 1920 Commons, Lauder College House, and Gutmann College House.
Penn physicists led by Bo Zhen have created hybrid light-matter particles that interact strongly enough to compute, pointing toward ultrafast, low-energy optical AI hardware.
Penn’s newest supercomputer is transforming research
Penn’s first campus-wide HPC and AI cluster, “Betty,” is expanding access to powerful computing, enabling groundbreaking projects, and fostering new collaborations across disciplines.
A bioengineered bean gum from the lab of Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell is found to reduce the levels of three microbes associated with head and neck squamous cell cancer to almost zero, without affecting the beneficial bacteria normally found in the mouth.
Fighting oral cancer with bioengineered chewing gum
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell shows that antiviral and antibacterial chewing gums reduce the levels of three microbes linked to worse outcomes in oral cancers, paving the way for more effective and affordable therapies.
The performing arts at Penn: Process, practice, and purpose
In the vivid tapestry of performing arts groups at Penn, students prepare for their performances while simultaneously enriching their college experience.
