By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer
From lightly-worn furniture to unused appliances, move-out week sees dumpsters overflowing with all sorts of nearly-new items. As the end of the semester approaches, a pair of business students have found a way to keep those goods out of the garbage and into the hands of the people who need them.
Edmond, Okla., sophomore Joshua Yoon and Dallas junior Nolan La wanted to find a home for the goods left behind by thousands of summer-bound students. Their solution, Bear-ly Used, will allow departing students to leave unwanted items like clothing, appliances, furniture and more in a donation pod located in the lobby of each dorm.
Volunteers will pick up each pod and move them all to a centralized location, from which multiple partnering nonprofits can take the things they need. In future years, Bear-ly Used hopes to implement a garage sale event for students to purchase used items at a fraction of the price.
Yoon, a Baylor Business Fellow interested in consulting, got the idea for Bear-ly Used last year when he moved out. The Honors Residential College, where Yoon lived, was participating in donating unwanted appliances and furniture to the nonprofit Caritas of Waco, but the program needed more structure.
“I stayed a little bit longer because I had a final on the very last day, so I got to see that entire move-out process being done with students,” Yoon said. “In our lobby, we had a ton of items that weren’t organized. There was no regular schedule for picking it up, so the lobby got really messy.”
In many other dorms, the donation system could also use some improvement.
“For other residence halls … students were just throwing away usable items in the dumpsters,” Yoon said. “It was ridiculous … the amount of reusable items that were being thrown out.”
When Yoon returned to Baylor last fall, he knew he wanted to refine the HRC’s program, expand it to the entire Baylor community and open the door for more nonprofits to receive the donations. But before he began, Yoon knew he needed a partner, so he enlisted the help of La, another Business Fellow and member of the Consulting Group at Baylor.
“From a start-up perspective, this wouldn’t be successful just trying to do it by myself,” Yoon said. “Not only is there more motivation, it’s just good to have someone to support you.”
As a former resident of Earle Hall, La said he had also seen dumpsters piling up with usable goods, so he felt compelled to solve the problem. With his interest in consulting, the project seemed like a great way to build up problem-solving and implementation skills.
“Consulting is when a business has a problem and someone needs to solve it,” La said. “So this has been really applicable. We’ve had to figure out the problem, really find out the needs, what it requires, and then propose a solution.”
The first thing he and Yoon did to address this was speak to other universities where programs like Bear-ly Used already exist. Their conversations ranged from the University of Texas to Princeton and Brown.
“We ended up having like 10 calls,” La said. “We just learned about their programs and then created a huge document about what their programs look like, what they do and how we can instill it at Baylor. That gave us a really good framework.”
From there, La and Yoon pitched their idea to Campus Living and Learning and the Office of Sustainability. With their help, the two began enlisting partner organizations.
According to Yoon, Bear-ly Used is partnering with Caritas, but they’re also partnering with three more groups: Lovely Village, a nonprofit for survivors of sexual assault; Green City Recyclers, a Houston-based textile recycling group; and Waco Habitat for Humanity. The advantage of working with multiple groups compared to just one, he said, is that it ensures fewer goods will be left behind.
“Maybe Caritas needs clothing more than furniture, but maybe Lovely Village is more interested in microwaves or things like that,” Yoon said.
While multiple partners will allow donations to be utilized to the maximum extent, there are still items that can and cannot be placed in the receiving pods. Gently used clothing, appliances and furniture will all be accepted, but anything broken or heavily worn cannot be. A complete list of items eligible for donation will be placed on each donation receptacle, Yoon said.
As Bear-ly Used prepares to implement its donation drive come move-out time, Yoon and La said that they’re still in need of volunteers to help consolidate the donated items from each dorm into a centralized location.
“I understand that from a volunteering perspective, it’s during finals week, so it becomes a little bit more difficult,” Yoon said. “However, shifts are only around two hours. So if someone is passionate about this, and they’re willing to help, we’d be more than happy to incorporate them.”
Volunteers will also be provided with food and drink for their services, Yoon said. And because Bear-ly Used is looking to expand in the future, volunteering is not limited to helping move the materials. Yoon and La also said they need more people helping out with operations as they begin implementing their next stage of the program next year — a garage sale from which students can purchase hugely discounted, lightly worn items.
“We’re going to shift the narrative [in year two], where once we collect everything, we’ll still give some of those items to our partner companies,” Yoon said. “However, we’re going to maintain a large percentage of things that students can use. Then we’re going to host a garage sale where students are able to buy the items at a fraction of the price. We’re probably going to bring it down to one tenth of the original price.”
Not only will this second stage of Bear-ly Used directly help students who buy the discounted items, it will also help fund Bear-ly Used into the indefinite future. The revenues will not be pocketed by La and Yoon, but rather they will be used to cover operating costs, like transporting donated items.
Students interested in volunteering for Bear-ly Used in May to help move-out can sign up using this form.
