HANCOCK — The recycling goods Gloria Griffith and her volunteers collect from the University of Oregon’s student residence halls has been, as described, overwhelming.

The first year, Griffith said, they collected five or six tons of recycling goods.

“Even the first year we were amazed at the number of things we collected,” she said. As the personnel of the residence halls learned of the program, the program began to grow. The employees of the residence halls we

“They…encourage students right away to do that (use the recycle bins), and then we also do it at Christmas time, right before they leave, because a lot of kids will clean their dorms, or they graduate.”

The items, once collected are then sorted and cleaned. Many items are distributed to low-income and homeless students throughout the Springfield School District.

“We could re-supply those students with school supplies and clothing for the whole school year with what we would get,” Griffith said. “The other things that were re-usable and re-sellable we were able to re-sell.”

Griffith and her volunteer group then partnered with the local community to locate and use a large warehouse in which to hold an enormous garage said. The money raised from the sales has been used to purchase many other items, including school supplies for the intended students.

Griffith said the program has benefitted everyone involved with it.

“We get such beautiful bedding sets — whole sets of sheets and pillow cases, and for a young child who maybe is just getting into housing after living in their car or in a shelter, they can get this bag of really cool, cute bedding for their bed, or they can get really cool clothing from the GAP, or Abercrombie or where ever, you know with those labels on them, and it’s free,” Griffith said. “The children feel so much better about themselves.”

In addition to being of enormous benefit to the community of Springfield, it has benefitted the university, as well as reducing the waste stream.

“It’s a win-win situation for our school district, because they have useable goods to give our low-income and homeless students. It works for the university, because they don’t have to pay (the local sanitation company) all the money to come get the bins every day, and dump them, and come back, and it works for our…program, because they don’t have all that stuff.”

And at the same time, Griffith said,”we’ve saved over 20 tons of used goods per year from our local landfill.”