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Sue Fassler was walking across SUNY ESF’s campus when something in a dumpster caught her eye. Amid the refuse were multiple chairs in good enough condition for use in classrooms.

Seeing the chairs in the trash inspired Fassler, now ESF’s director of sustainability, to look into New York state’s surplus system, which redistributes overstocked government property. It wasn’t long before the initial search turned into a mission to improve ESF’s surplus property process and advance the campus’ sustainability.

Six years later, this mission has culminated into Fassler and the ESF Center for Sustainable Materials Management’s Resource Exchange project, which allows faculty, staff and graduate students to list and claim extra property for use on campus — such as furniture and lab supplies — to help keep materials in circulation longer. The project launched in July and Fassler said it has already had a notable impact on campus.

“This is my number one favorite project I’ve ever worked on, it is kind of my baby,” Fassler said. “We’ve already diverted 9,000 pounds of material, so that means we’ve re-used 9,000 pounds of things on campus. If we were to buy those things new, it would have cost about $57,000, so we’re saving money and avoiding the landfill and the incinerator.”

The ESF Center for Sustainable Materials Management is funded by Rheaply, a company that invests in organizations promoting sustainability and addressing climate change. Recognizing Fassler and the CSMM’s efforts, Rheaply recently awarded the center with the 2024 Rheaply Innovator Award for its creative use of funding.

An ESF Office of Sustainability spokesperson said the platform promotes sustainability efforts on campus, and receiving the award will promote the push for other similar projects at the university and in the community.

Because ESF is part of the State University of New York system, Fassler said state officials consider items like the school’s desks and chairs state property, which means the school has to follow strict regulations when disposing of them. Under their old surplus process, she said the system’s inefficiency combined with state regulations led to usable items being thrown out because the school simply didn’t have the facilities to keep them.

Before the changes, interested students and organizations needed to email ESF’s property control manager to inquire about items. The slow process filled the school’s storage systems because of the delay in transferring items, Fassler said. The new system displays the school’s surplus inventory on a website, allowing students and organizations to request the items online.

Eden Gardner, a student employee in ESF’s Office of Sustainability, was part of the project’s initial development team. Gardner posts inventory on the website and facilitates the exchanges when users claim an item.

Gardner said he worked on campus full-time this summer to help launch the website. He said he got to meet a lot of the project’s users and enjoyed watching them discover the opportunities the project offers. With proposed renovations expected to begin across ESF’s campus in the future, he said the website has also helped ESF clear out old storage rooms that could be used as potential student or office spaces.

“It’s really the human aspect of it,” Gardner said of what he enjoys most about the project. “Instead of sitting at a desk typing Word spreadsheets all day, I’m running around campus and meeting and talking to people, so that’s a really fun part of it.”

ESF is in the process of helping other campuses adopt its current sustainability model, as other SUNY schools face the same issues as ESF with its surplus property process, Fassler said. She expressed hope for changes to state law, proposing a bill that would allow for a more formalized process to donate surplus state property, allowing other schools to implement ESF’s system.

Fassler’s bill was referred to governmental operations in New York state’s assembly committee on Feb. 5 and she’s hopeful it will pass in legislation. She said, despite wanting national success, the program has already made a major impact locally.

“Hopefully, it can be a model for others to adopt a similar model, or help find ways to implement reuse into their life or into their community,” the spokesperson said. “It’s solving a need that we have in our community and on campus, but it’s just our campus. This is everywhere, so it’s really cool to see it be implemented and see any ripple effect it might have.”

Gardner said ESF’s sustainability model is a good pilot program for other SUNY schools and believes the system’s success can be replicated on other campuses because of its focus on reusing already available items. Gardner said beyond SUNY universities, the system could be implemented at local schools like Syracuse University.

Fassler said the old system was in place for decades before the Resource Exchange was created, expressing similar hope to Gardner in expanding the system to other institutions.

“I just want to get things out of the dumpster, so it’s convincing people that you’re coming at this from a genuine place of goodness,” Fassler said. “You just want to see things saved, not for your benefit, but for Earth and other people’s benefit.”

Published on February 26, 2025 at 1:04 am

Contact Henry: hdaley@syr.edu