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A weekly show from the folks at East Lansing Info breaking down all the news and happenings in East Lansing, Michigan.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of East Lansing Insider. I'm East Lansing Info's deputy editor, Anna Liz Nichols, and today I'm joined by Chris Hewitt, operations coordinator at the Michigan State University Surplus Store Recycling Center. Given that we just got through the semester and graduation season at MSU, a huge block of the city of East Lansing's population is left. And in their wake, they've left many of their dorm room items, futons, microwave stands, and more. Now the Surplus Store has developed a little bit of a cult following on social media in the Greater Lansing area as some weirder items have found their way onto the sales floor, and we're going to talk about those.
Anna Liz Nichols:But given the influx of items the recycling center and surplus stores are sorting through right now, I want to start by getting a better picture of what's going on right now. So, Chris, what have the last two or so weeks looked like for everyone at the Surplus Store and Recycling Center in terms of getting items on campus and and, you know, clearing up clutter? What what does that actually look like?
Chris Hewitt:It is controlled chaos. It is our busiest time of the year. I've we picked up over 660,000 pounds of material from the dorms, for for move out related items. We track that specifically. We work with the residence halls for for a program called pack up kitchen.
Chris Hewitt:It's when the students move out, they can drop items at designated points, in the buildings, and that's where we go pick it up. And, yeah, it's in total was over 660 between that and the trash and the recycling, it was over 660,000 pounds.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yeah. How much of that actually ends up being able to be reused, like, at the the Surplus Store slash like, what what happens now? Because some of that might be recycled. What does this all look like?
Chris Hewitt:Yeah. So, great question. So it comes so the there's a lot of trash that it gets picked up as people clean out their their dorms and apartments on campus for the year. We take all that to, the Grangeville Landfill on Wood On Wood Wood Road. But the recycling moving back to our recycling center and then all the reusable goods, it was, I think, over a 100 box trucks this year.
Chris Hewitt:I know we did 84 box trucks full on Friday and Saturday of move out just from the dorms of futons, refrigerators, carpets, random storage cubbies, and that was over a 100,000 pounds of items. And that all came back where we have a whole system where we kind of triage it as it comes in, seeing what is good enough, what is in good shape to be resold, and then we get it cleaned up, priced, and kinda either put on the sales floor or stored to get eventually put out there as inventory allows us to.
Anna Liz Nichols:You know, for people who haven't had the whimsical experience of seeing some of the stuff the Surplus Center puts
Chris Hewitt:Yeah.
Anna Liz Nichols:Out on the floor via the social media channels or a visit to the Surplus Store, could you tell listeners at home what the Surplus Store does? Because that's the part of the recycling center that I think at at most, like, forward facing, people get to see what the sustainable sustainability efforts look like at MSU.
Chris Hewitt:Yeah. So the Surplus Store, I like to think of it as the kind of the garage sale for the university or the secondhand store, for for all departments. We've had anything and everything come through. The dad joke that I say is that sold everything from an aardvark skeleton to a Zamboni. That's my a to z joke.
Chris Hewitt:We had a train a number of years ago.
Anna Liz Nichols:A train?
Chris Hewitt:Yes. Like, a train engine from the power plant. That's crazy. There's some news articles about it. You can find it, with a quick search.
Chris Hewitt:But we are our role is to divert, man our our slogan is managing waste as a resource. And we handle the trash and your recycling and compost, but there's a lot of reusable a lot of items that don't fit either of those molds that we want to, find a second home for from computers, to athletic memorabilia, to vehicles. We sell over a 100 vehicles every year. And with move out, there's countless futons and refrigerators and microwaves that students can't take with them. Instead of getting trashed, we try to make them available for future students and the public.
Anna Liz Nichols:I think the and I you could maybe confirm if these are items that have made it out of the Surplus Store. I've heard of a X-ray machine Yeah. And a hot dog stand.
Chris Hewitt:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm sure we've had lots of those. We had a Bosco stick stand
Anna Liz Nichols:last week. That's what I'm thinking of. My bad.
Chris Hewitt:The Bosco stick. Yeah. That was I had friends texting me. They're like, my family group chat is talking about the Bosco stick stand.
Anna Liz Nichols:I sent it to my friends.
Chris Hewitt:Yes.
Anna Liz Nichols:Where I was like, oh, no. It wasn't a hotdog stand, though who who knows maybe
Chris Hewitt:You could Yeah. You could
Anna Liz Nichols:Surplus Store is a cave of many wonders.
Chris Hewitt:It's I'm gonna use that as a new slogan. Yeah. Cave of many wonders.
Anna Liz Nichols:But, I was wondering in terms of other universities because it's it's you talked about the the volume of of things you guys have picked up.
Chris Hewitt:Yeah.
Anna Liz Nichols:Is this a common thing for other universities to have? Yeah.
Chris Hewitt:Yes. So a lot there there are quite a few other universities that do have surplus stores. Like, Western Michigan has a store off that's in Kalamazoo. Penn does come to mind, like, Penn State, Indiana, Minnesota are the Big 10 universities. U of M has one.
Chris Hewitt:Theirs is just online right now. And, currently, a lot of Big 10 universities have some format Surplus Store, and but the scope ranges from just what their operations are able to handle. Some are online only. They sell a lot through a website called govgovernmentdeals.com. That's a common way, but we have our own URL, msusurplusstore.com, where we put about 7,000 items on our website.
Chris Hewitt:So we try to get as much online as possible just to reach a broader audience. But it is kinda we are unique in that we have our Surplus Store also connected with the recycling center and compost facility on campus. We're pretty unique in that way.
Anna Liz Nichols:What are some of the benefits of of combining these two areas of sustain of sustainability, both reuse and recycle and then, I guess, overall reduce?
Chris Hewitt:Yeah. So we have which just gives us a lot of control over the waste stream. Currently, I think it's 49% of all waste on campus is diverted from the landfill, through our operations. And, by picking everything up and really getting a chance to hands on go through it I mean, all the recycling is hand sorted. We bring the food waste back to our facility to feed to worms or take off to be composted somewhere else, and it really gets us it allows us to be kind of a touch point to really find the best use for that.
Chris Hewitt:So items that the recite that that come into surplus, they're just general recycling. We can just wheel across the building to the recycling center. And if in the recycling center we get a bunch of books, we can take those over to surplus and vice versa. I just try to find the best use to keep it out of the landfill.
Anna Liz Nichols:How long have you been with the the surplus and recycling center?
Chris Hewitt:I've been there in my role for over six years now, and I did work there as a student years ago in the recycling center.
Anna Liz Nichols:Oh, really?
Chris Hewitt:And I graduated, worked a couple different recycling environmental jobs. And then in 2019, my position opened up, and I couldn't say no to coming back. So
Anna Liz Nichols:Chris, can I ask you what drew you to to this role?
Chris Hewitt:Well, yeah. So what drew me to role is I I grew up loving environmental aspects. I wanted to have a my degree was environmental policy and also Michigan State. It was the only place I applied. It's my parents' I grew big fan.
Chris Hewitt:And the idea to apply both of those, like, my degree to try and better the environmental footprint of this university that I love every day, is just a great opportunity to really apply what I've learned and kinda give back that way. And it's also really fun working at the Surplus Store, finding all the odd items that come in.
Anna Liz Nichols:You mentioned the the aardvark skeleton and the zamboni. Are there any favorite items that you've come across?
Chris Hewitt:Yeah. I mean, usually, the silly most one off things that are always fun. When we've gotten parts of the scoreboards from Breslin and the football stadium, those are fun because those are, like, the giant Spartan heads are, like, 50 feet wide. Jeez. That's always fun.
Chris Hewitt:Oh, we had a whole pallet of radiation detectors from, like, the nineteen sixties that came in. Those were really fun and cool because they're still, like, in the box and brand and, like, pristine condition. There's always a ton of mannequins that come in. Like, we got the mannequins from the Breslin Center that Tom Izzo photo booth that they had in the hallway for a couple years. Like, we got those mannequins, and those were fun because they were just really realistic and creepy.
Chris Hewitt:So that tends to play well with us of just fun odds and ends.
Anna Liz Nichols:Who buys this stuff?
Chris Hewitt:The the public you collectors. You don't yeah. We get we have a we have a good following of loyal customers and also people who are constantly discovering us every year, which is always fun to get a chance to kinda retell our story and show what we do for the university.
Anna Liz Nichols:Did the Bosco stick in? Did that sell?
Chris Hewitt:Yes. It did. It actually
Anna Liz Nichols:My hopes and dreams are dashed.
Chris Hewitt:It did. It actually sold several times. I think twice someone bought it and never came and picked it up, so we we put it back up for sale again. Oh, wow. And so as someone who we I help oversee the social media.
Chris Hewitt:It was very popular every time we posted it, so I was like, I guess we'll get a bunch of likes again.
Anna Liz Nichols:You know, what does, your role look like on the day to day or some of the operations at the recycling center and and surplus store? What does it look like?
Chris Hewitt:So helping oversee the direction of our marketing. So, like, our social media, finding items to market and, yeah, post across our social media platforms to kinda advertise what comes in every week because not everything goes up online. So on Thursdays, we usually do kind of a sales preview of our Friday sales day from eight to 03:30. Also helping with recycling education on campus, trying to, increase our recycling rate are kind of my main jobs, and we track everything on campus. So every time we pick up an item from a building, we put it in we track it in a big database.
Chris Hewitt:So using that information to try to find, spots where we can improve is another aspect of what I do.
Anna Liz Nichols:How come the Surplus Store has limited days that it's open? I mean, the store is only open for in store purchases on Fridays from 8AM to 03:30PM.
Chris Hewitt:And that's that's a fair question. And we I I mentioned the other stores earlier. A lot of them, like Western Michigan, is open on Wednesdays, and a lot of the places might have one to maybe two days a week that they're open. And that's usually because Surplus stores are pretty bare bones staff. Like, we're we're kind of a leaner crew.
Chris Hewitt:We're the we get thousands of items a week. And so Monday through Thursday, the same people that are helping you run the cat, helping you check out and load your cars and helping on the sales floor are the same people who are helping unload the items going through I mean, everything from microscopes to clothing to couches to DNA sequencing machines, finding out what they are, how they work, what their condition is, and getting the store cleaned up and restocked every week is like a new game of Tetris where we're trying to fit new stuff in as it comes. And so it's usually Monday through Thursday. We are getting thousands of pounds of things every day, getting it ready, and then getting the store open for Friday, and then start all over again every that's kind of how the week goes.
Anna Liz Nichols:So This is coming from someone who's like, oh, I can't make it on the Friday.
Chris Hewitt:I know. I know. And that's where we, so before the pandemic Mhmm. I think we opened, like, twice a week, and the website wasn't as built out. It had a small selection of items.
Chris Hewitt:When we closed down and could only do curbside pickup, we really expanded the website up to about 7,000 items of inventory. So we are we put a couple dozen to, like, a 100 items a day on the website. That 11AM is when it updates. So we moved to this hybrid model where we try to, get as much online as possible for those who can't make the Friday sale. Because we do realize it is limiting, and we do try to do some, special sales here and there.
Chris Hewitt:We've had a couple Saturday sales in the last year, but this is what we are as we are also in charge of picking up all the trash and recycling on campus, we have a lot of lot of things that we're juggling at once, so this is what we're able to do at this time.
Anna Liz Nichols:I know a lot of the the pickup for all the the the futons and stuff for was is MSU campus. But in terms of the the Greater East Lansing, Greater Lansing area, obviously, the recycling center is kind of a hub for, you know, bringing your your, recyclable paper goods, glass, cans, that kind of stuff. From your perspective, what is the role of the recycling center even outside of of the university? Because I know East Lansing residents can can come to MSU campus and bring their recyclable items.
Chris Hewitt:Yeah. So, really, the recycling center is, we are there to keep as much waste from the university out of the landfill as possible as part of our goal, and to provide, you know, recycling service to hundreds of buildings on campus. But then we also have the drop off center, to act as a seven days a week option for those, who don't have recycling at their apartment complex or at their, their homes off campus, just to provide them an outlet so they can also recycle with us anytime.
Anna Liz Nichols:Is there any component of the Surplus Store and Recycling Center that maybe doesn't get talked about a lot or that people might not know about.
Chris Hewitt:Well, I I would say that with the recycling center, so we're generally, we we recycle about close to 6,000,000 pounds a year. And with the last couple years, 96% of our material stays in the state of Michigan. So I know with recycling, there's a lot of you see ClickBait articles about things getting sent overseas and whether or it can be recycled. We, try to always prioritize staying in the state of Michigan as much as possible. We we're fortunate that there's a lot of manufacturer.
Chris Hewitt:Manufacturer. It's a high manufacturing state, so we can send a lot. We can find vendors for stuff. But that when you recycle with us, that your cardboard is staying in the state of Michigan. Your metal is staying locally here in Lansing.
Chris Hewitt:Your glasses too. The stuff you when you're a cycle with us, you're not just keeping it out of the landfill, but you're also supporting Michigan companies as they manufacture new items.
Anna Liz Nichols:That's very interesting because that was one of my questions of you know, I know it's it's it'll be like science and medical equipment that go through the Surplus Center. In in addition to a thousand other, areas of materials, I was gonna ask, are there any industries or, I don't know, workplaces that particularly benefit from from these recyclable materials?
Chris Hewitt:Yeah. I mean, our we partner with metal recyclers here in Lansing that we send our stuff to. And like I said, like, all of our cardboard goes and paper go down by, like, the Ballot Creek area because there's a lot of cardboard manufacturing in that area, just providing feedstock. I mean, this I like to think of that the recycling center. Like, we man we bail everything up and load them on the semi trucks.
Chris Hewitt:And so, we're collecting recycling, but I think of it as that we produce some a tangible material that companies will pay us for. And then, otherwise, we would be paying the university would be paying to landfill it forever, and instead it could become a new bottle or a new can just by choosing to put it in a separate bin.
Anna Liz Nichols:How old is the recycling center and surplus?
Chris Hewitt:No. It's it's fascinating. So our current building was built in 2009, and that's when the surplus store and recycling operations were combined into one singular department. So the recycling center and surplus store, we are all one singular department. I like to think of the surplus as kind of the public facing side while the recycling is the the back end collections, doing about 50,000 stops a year where we pick up all the items on campus.
Chris Hewitt:It's about £26,000,000 annually. But before that, they were separate entities, they kind of merged into one. Recycling was established about thirty five years ago on campus. Students petitioned the board of trustees to form a cohesive recycling operations department. And before that, the surplus store has existed.
Chris Hewitt:Before that, it was known as, like, kind salvage store over by Trowbridge And Surplus Store over by the Catabas stop for decades. Before that in the thirties, it was, kind of a salvage store over by the corner, I think, of Mount Hope and Farm Lane where the MSUFCU is over there. We found pictures where, yeah, they, started doing that. And we've someone found in the board of trustee minutes from, like, the eighteen sixties, them approving a professor to sell some excess farm goods. And, I mean, we sell farm equipment still to this day.
Chris Hewitt:So it's kind of like there's been some aspect of reselling unwanted items, you know, for the entire history of the university.
Anna Liz Nichols:Now that move out effectively is done, what's the next task for the Surplus Store and Recycling Center?
Chris Hewitt:Well, we have our annual bike sale coming up. May 28, we we're gonna have our annual bike sale. We'll have hundreds of bikes. I think it's gonna be $40 a bike any condition.
Anna Liz Nichols:Really?
Chris Hewitt:Yeah. $40.45. I'm pretty sure it's 40. I think that's what we did last year. Mhmm.
Chris Hewitt:And yeah. Yeah. We get the the bikes that get abandoned on campus, and they come to us. And it's a great I mean, I just think that students I mean, when I went to MSU, I didn't really know about the Surplus until about my my till I was a senior, that we're trying to be just a great resource for students. We've got hundreds of futons and appliances and bikes and lots of computers and electronics, and that you're only here for a short time, and usually, finances are tighter for students.
Chris Hewitt:And we like to be here to be an outlet for students as much as possible.
Anna Liz Nichols:Once the the bulk of students come or new even new students come in the fall, is there typically a a sale or or expanded hours when it when fall hits, when people might be wanting these items?
Chris Hewitt:Yeah. Yeah. So, usually, for move in, the week or two leading up to move in, we do we add a couple extra sales days during the week to try to be here as students come in, get this give them a couple more opportunities to come and buy. And then we've done in the past some specific student only sales where you have to show your ID to get in kinda off our normal Friday sale days. We just did that the first Tuesday after move in.
Chris Hewitt:I mean, after move out, we did a a student sale where you if you showed a college a college ID, you could get in and, kinda get first dibs at all the futons or refrigerators that students left behind so students could get ready, and kind of pre stockpile for fall semester or for their new apartments or whatever.
Anna Liz Nichols:One thing I wanted to ask you about as someone who went to MSU, the word on campus is that you can put recyclables in any container because they're just gonna hand sort it anyways. That's something that circulates on campus. What do you think of that rhetoric?
Chris Hewitt:I appreciate that they are that the item is getting recycled. That's the first thing. I mean, the the biggest people ask what they could do to improve recycling is always just to just recycle. When we do audits of trash, we can find that, you know, upwards of over 50 to 60% of the material could be recycled or composted by in some capacity. So just recycling in the first place is the best thing.
Chris Hewitt:On campus, we have what's called source separated. So in the halls, we have the bins for paper and the bins for plastic and metal, and that really just, helps expedite our process. So when we hand sort everything on campus gets hand sorted by students. And, by having it separated, it just makes us so that we can get through that material more efficiently and also keeps it cleaner. Because if you put in a Pepsi bottle that's not fully empty and then it spills on the paper, then that paper can't be recycled.
Chris Hewitt:It's trash because it's all goopy. And so that's it keeps the material cleaner. And when we have cleaner material, we can get higher a higher value for it when we then sell it to manufacturers.
Anna Liz Nichols:It's interesting to hear the cardboard thing, and you said it gets sent to Battle Creek. So cereal boxes?
Chris Hewitt:Yeah. There's a well, because there's Kellogg's. There's a there's a high demand in the state for companies that make cardboard and paperboard boxes and things like that. So we have a couple companies that buy our material from us. And who we actually sell it to can change on a month by month basis.
Chris Hewitt:We actually use what's called a a broker. So the value of that recycling changes month to month, almost like stocks. The value can fluctuate. Cardboard was a $150 a ton. A year ago, it was down to 50 a couple weeks ago, and now it's back up to $90 a ton.
Chris Hewitt:And so we shop around at who will give us the best value for that material.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yeah. So, obviously, you mentioned the recycling center and the surplus store have been around for for a while. And before that, there were, you know, in the community, different versions of of recycling and reuse, resources. I was wondering as someone who, you know, currently works there, what might sustainability efforts look like from from this this organization maybe in a decade from now? What might be some things we might see in the future?
Chris Hewitt:Oh, that's I would love to, speak capturing more recycling that's going in the trash and also just reduce how much trash we have in the first place. We, unfortunately, suffered some setbacks on campus during the pandemic years as there's a lot of single use plastic that needed to be used in the cafeterias and for various things for very good reasons, but that then led to a higher, percentage of room chill being thrown out that before we were composting or just using reusable goods. But just seeing the university take more steps to just eliminate unnecessary waste, and also provide more opportunities for items that we're currently not recycling or capturing well. Like, I would love to do more with, food waste from the public and and the dorms and things like that and add other materials for hard to recycle and hard to divert items that we currently don't take.
Anna Liz Nichols:Have there been any sustainability efforts on campus that, you know, coming from the recycling center have been particularly impactful?
Chris Hewitt:Oh, there's been a big effort the last couple of years with, recycling at athletic events. And so with with the introduction of alcohol sales at stadiums, there's been a big push to try to really improve the recycling there because there's suddenly, a lot more recycling with those alcohol sales. I know from football last year, we diverted we recycled over a 100,000 alcohol cans, beer cans, and that was something that we weren't doing previously because that wasn't a new thing in the stream. So we've had to really do a lot of work behind the scenes to really make sure that's all getting captured from the public in those public spaces.
Anna Liz Nichols:Was that just within the stadium or or the tailgating areas?
Chris Hewitt:Just the stadium. The just the stadium. The university pays for the deposit on items sold in the stadium, so that's where our responsibility is recuperating those items that are in the stadium.