

Caleigh Hutchins hopped aboard a massive cart piled high with mattress pads, body pillows and blankets and flew down the walkway leading to the University of Colorado’s Willard Hall, skidding to a stop just outside Farrand Field.

Hutchins, a freshman studying business management with a minor in environmental studies, was hauling used goods out of the dorms Thursday for CU’s Give-and-Go donation program.

The program, around 20 years old, puts a dent in the approximately 100 tons of waste CU students living in the dorms send off to the landfill during the end-of-the-year move-out by giving the excess to those in need.

“Dude, I’m madly in love with the environment, and I want to do anything I can to help it,” Hutchins said.

In 2016, the program unearthed around 26 tons of items from the 26 dormitories on campus and donated them to Salvation Army.

As freshman Lucy Haggard toted storage bins that towered high above her head toward a curb to be packed into a Salvation Army truck, she figured Give-and-Go was on track for another big turnout.

“This is my workout for today,” Haggard told her fellow student workers, most part of eco-friendly groups on campus.

Angie Gilbert, Zero Waste events coordinator, had a CU truck-bed teeming with ramen, cheese crackers and hair products. The non-perishable foods and personal care items students frantically try to clear out of their dorms before the Friday move-out deadline are donated to the Boulder Emergency Family Assistance Association.

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