September Scavenging

Maybe the rain is still scarce for spring but in Students’ House cleaning has been the order of the day in the past few days. As some organizations switch offices, others plan to enter their first one but whatever the case the lower storey of the building has been buzzing with activity.

JEF- an organization that will be moving to a new office in the next scholastic year- thought of an innovative yet brilliant idea. Offices would be ceiling-full of stuff gathered from last year’s activities and events. While most of this stuff is only worthy of recycling, some is most definitely in a good enough condition to be reused. And JEF proposed to organizations cleaning up their offices to put their unwanted stuff in the corridor while other organizations scavenge for things that might be useful for them this coming year.

And lo and behold! Boxes filled with all sorts of crazy stuff filled the narrow corridors while the offices breathed a sigh of fresh air as their empty spaces were re-found.

Greenhouse members visited the activity and, being an organization with its first office, found a plethora of stuff that where considered handy. Throughout the time Greenhouse members spent going through the boxes of unwanted stuff, JEF and MUSC were clearing out their offices.

Greenhousers were scratching their heads (and washing their hands) handling all the brimful boxes.

Among the things that were recovered by Greenhousers were cutlery, banners, ropes, crayons, a cupboard, a fridge and much more. We had more capital than we ever had throughout the organization’s history! And all this would have ended up being thrown away in a skip!

Greenhouse members also gave a helping hand sorting out the materials in the waste boxes and separating them into paper, plastic, metal and other waste. The former three were disposed of in the bring-in site containers while the other waste was thrown away in a skip brought over for this clean-up event. One sided paper was placed in WINK/Greenhouse’s rough paper stand in front of canteen.

And thus we sorted all our newly acquired items in our new office satisfied that we reduced the amount of waste that would have been generated and content that we now had some useful stuff that might come in handy come next October. We commend JEF for the initiative and all organizations that participated.