Daily Trojan Covers Student Push to Bring a Zero-Waste Move-Out Pilot to USC

The Daily Trojan, USC's student newspaper, published “EcoDorm cleans, furnishes sustainably” on February 23, 2024 — a feature by Julia Ho on EcoDorm, the student organization founded by JJ Flores that would become ReDorm, and on the zero-waste move-out program it was then trying to bring to USC.

The piece opens on the two numbers that made the case. Between 2019 and 2023, average household spending on back-to-college dorm shopping rose 40%, to roughly $1,367 per person, according to the annual survey by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics. Meanwhile, the average college student generates about 640 pounds of waste a year, per the Columbia University Greens — concentrated heavily into move-out week, when rugs, fans, and mattresses with years of life left in them go into dumpsters.

Flores, then a junior majoring in international relations, had founded EcoDorm in Fall 2021; it began operating in July 2023, starting in South Central Los Angeles. The article describes a two-pronged model: zero-waste move-outs, and the community cleanups the first funds.

What the article captures is a program described mostly in the future tense. Later that year, USC Housing would officially partner with EcoDorm LLC to coordinate daily pickups in 23 buildings, on and off campus, during move-out, cleaning and repairing usable items over the summer with community members and students, and giving about 20% of the refurbished stock to South Central community organizations that asked for it. The last step — selling the rest back to students at move-in — was still ahead of it.

At the time of writing, EcoDorm was not a USC-affiliated organization. Its cleanups, though, were already running with USC groups — the USC Student Sustainability Committee, the Environmental Student Assembly, and, most recently then, the service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega. On February 17, 2024, EcoDorm and APO collected 52.4 pounds of trash and recyclables around the Hoover Recreation Center in a single hour. The article notes that it was the only community cleanup in South Central, funded by the resale side of the model.

Two APO members quoted in the piece framed the affordability side of it. Josh Placido, a freshman majoring in computational neuroscience and a first-generation low-income student, said the program “bridges that gap” for students weighing housing costs against the cost of an education. Jantzen Ebreo, a sophomore majoring in health promotion and disease prevention studies, pointed to upperclassmen who lose the guarantee of campus housing and have to furnish an apartment on their own.

The article also situates the ask. USC's Assignment: Earth goals and President Carol Folt's 2028 sustainability plan include a zero-waste initiative targeting 90% diversion from landfill — which is precisely the thing a move-out reuse program produces.

What happened next

The partnership described here as a goal happened later that year. USC ran its first full move-out to move-in program with EcoDorm — the university's first time partnering with a student company on a major initiative — collecting 16,394 lbs (8.2 tons) from 22 buildings in 15 days, at a 90% diversion rate independently reviewed by a TRUE Zero Waste Certified Advisor, and then selling it back to students.

Running that pilot by hand is what made the case for software. EcoDorm became ReDorm, now the platform campuses run these programs on — inventory, a campus-branded move-in storefront, and the impact reporting underneath — used by universities including UC San Diego and UCLA.

Read the full story at dailytrojan.com.