INTERNATIONAL REUSE PROJECT COMPLETED AT FACULTY HOUSE

On May 7, kitchen equipment weighing in at 14.75 tons was trucked away from Columbia University ’s Faculty House, a first step in the building’s gut renovation.

On June 13, the 167 pieces of equipment were unloaded in San Pedro Sula, Honduras , where they’ve become the heart of another educational endeavor – training in commercial cooking at a new trade school in this economically and educationally disadvantaged area. The school will be open to students of all ages and, besides the cooking program, focus on skills training in computers, plumbing and bricklaying, says Dan Carpenter, founder of World in Need, a sponsor of the school.

Helen Bielak is Manager, Surplus Reuse Program, in the Department of Environmental Stewardship, where coordination of the Faculty House reuse project was centered. Bielak describes the effort as “pretty amazing … it took everybody to believe it would work.”

While Bielak says the lead time for this kind of effort would normally be months, it came to pass at Faculty House in a matter of days because of outstanding teamwork among project managers and demolition workers from Sciame Construction Company, members of Columbia Facilities and Housing & Dining Departments, and personnel from Institution Recycling Network, a surplus property management company that was the conduit between Columbia and the charitable receiving organization, World in Need.

"Environmental stewardship is everyone's responsibility. It was truly rewarding to have worked together with IRN and Columbia for such a worthy cause,” says Charles Iulo, Sciame assistant project manager.

IRN, based in Concord, N.H. , collects property from organizations that would otherwise be discarding large amounts of surplus goods. 

According to an IRN press release, in 2007, the company completed projects for nearly 100 organizations in 15 states. The surplus was sent to about 12 countries in the Caribbean, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia . Thousands of items also reached U.S. organizations dealing with relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Recent natural disasters in Myanmar and China have prompted requests for help from relief agencies in those countries, says Stacey Clark, IRN’s on-site manager at Faculty House. Any non-profit organization can sign up to work with IRN, Clark says. 

IRN’s work has “exploded” in recent years “because reuse is more economical than disposal; people like Helen Bielak and Columbia University want to do the right thing; and the greener the United States gets, the more we get calls,” Clark says.

She kept track of each piece as it was removed from the Faculty House kitchen to the shipping containers. The bulk of the load comprised cabinets, shelving, sinks, prep tables, salad bars, warming units, cold servers, soda coolers, Frialators, Vulcan Ovens, and refrigerators.

Clark says the 40-foot ocean-shipping containers IRN uses are packed floor-to-ceiling so that the sponsoring charity gets the greatest cost benefit and least amount of shipping damage. The costs of getting material loaded into the containers are borne by the donating institution, IRN pays to move the containers to the ship, and the receiving charitable organization – in this case, World in Need – pays all shipping and delivery costs.

Based in Angleton, Texas , World in Need describes itself as a nonprofit relief organization whose mission is to provide food, medical supplies and emergency relief.

Carpenter says any Faculty House equipment left over from the trade school will go to an orphanage just opening its doors in San Pedro Sula.

The Faculty House project is the first step in a growing relationship between Columbia and IRN. The company has been hired for construction waste management at the Manhattanville site, and has recently completed furniture and equipment removals prior to renovations at Ruggles, East Camus and Wien residence halls. These materials are headed as nearby as Brooklyn and as far away as Spanish Town, Jamaica .

The Faculty House renovation, including interior modernization and systems upgrades, is another in a growing list of Columbia ’s LEED-registered projects. The United States Green Building Council describes its LEED system as “the nationally accepted benchmark for design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings.” Completion is expected in fall 2009.