Montana State University recycles materials during residence hall renovation

Montana State University (MSU) students worked with their residence hall staff to haul old furniture from campus housing and preparing various pieces for recycling as part of the school’s sustainability efforts, a report by the Bozeman Daily Chronicle says. 

The week-long effort is a partnership between Residence Life and Facilities Services and the Office of Sustainability and is set to update furniture pieces in the Roskie and South Hedges residence halls throughout campus, including old wooden platform beds, mattresses and metal lofts. The beds and mattresses will be replaced with loftable beds.

Seven hundred mattresses were sent to a local mattress recycling facility, the report says, and all of the metals—a total of 15,000 pounds—were recycling from both residence halls. Pacific Steel and Recycling in Bozeman, Montana, took the materials.

According to the report, the group removed 600 platform beds from South Hedges and 300 from Roskie. Originally, the campus was going to take the beds to a landfill, but Logun Norris, recycling coordinator for the Associated Students of MSU, posted an ad on Craigslist for the material and gathered community members to tear down and take away the wood.

A professor at the college’s School of Architecture in the College of Arts and Architecture will use the remaining wood with his students on a tiny house project. About one-eighth of the material remained and was sent to a landfill.

Two hundred of the three hundred wooden beds from Roskie were landfilled, the report says. A community member took the remaining 100 beds to build a shed from the wood. In total, 730 of the 930 beds were diverted from landfill.

The school plans to continue to recycle the remaining wood and metals from residence halls that will undergo this upgrade within the next year or two.