Dorms, Dumpsters and Recycling at Bryn Athyn

Bryn Athyn Secondary Schools and Bryn Athyn College are are parterning with a local eco-friendly firm, Cleaner Earth Company, to help promote a better environment.

The initiative "Dorms, Dumpsters and Recylcing" stems from an incident that occured last year when a resident found loads of unopened food cans, household items like lamps and down comforters thrown to waste as students head home for the summer. 

The inevitable spring cleaning at semester's end is bound to leave the same amount of waste as usual. So to combat this problem, the organization is helping by clearing the mountains of trash. 

Here is the official press release courtesy of Debra Letmitte:

There’s spring cleaning and then there’s… well, call it the Herculean task of sorting out the stuff left behind when students move out of a school dormitory.

“I was appalled and dismayed last year at the stuff I pulled out of a dumpster following one school’s move-out day,” said Debra Lermitte of Abington. “There were new sneakers, a down comforter, an entire case of unopened plastic orange juice containers, a lamp…. I could go on and on and on.”

Lermitte isn’t into dumpster diving, she’s co-owner of The Cleaner Earth Company, an eco-friendly cleaning company based in Abington, which this spring takes its craft to an entirely new level - one familiar to the parents of secondary- and college-age kids.

When students move out of on-campus housing this month at Bryn Athyn College and the Academy of the New Church Secondary Schools (ANCSS), both in Bryn Athyn, the company will be there in a first-time initiative “Dorms, Dumpsters and Recycling.”

Lermitte, herself a former Bryn Athyn College student, is coordinating the project with The Cleaner Earth Company co-founder Angela Herder of Bryn Athyn. 

The company will accumulate all recyclable materials from mountains of trash, and separate anything that might be sold at the Bryn Athyn Thrift Shop, 510 Tomlinson Rd., Huntingdon Valley. It also will assist June 4 with a sale of used furniture from the girls’ dorm at the high school, Glenn Hall, which is being razed for new construction.

About five 20 to 30-ton dumpsters, plus recycling toters and numerous bins and boxes are at the ready in the dorms, strategically placed on every floor, in every laundry room, kitchen area and lobby, said Lermitte. Recycling will be handled by the consolidated plant operations department of the New Church which operates the secondary schools and college.

The initiative will take place on three consecutive Saturdays:

• 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 21 at Bryn Athyn College, 2945 College Drive, Bryn Athyn
• 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 28 at ANCSS, 2815 Huntingdon Pike, Bryn Athyn
• 9 a.m. to noon June 4, public sale of used desks, dressers, bookshelves, bed frames and mirrors at Glenn Hall, ANCSS campus. The sale is cash-and-carry, with prices ranging from $8 to $75. Money raised benefits student scholarships at ANCSS. The sale is being coordinated by Hannah Lermitte, director of special events for ANCSS. All leftover pieces will go to The Furniture Lady, 2700 Buck Rd., Huntingdon Valley, a nonprofit whose proceeds go toward helping those in need.

“On the move-out day at the college and high schools,” said Lermitte,” we’ll monitor what the students throw out and recycle make sure that what is in recycle bins really is something that can be recycled, and what is in bins for the thrift shop really is something the shop will want.”

Without the new effort, students have little choice but to dump everything as trash.

“Like at so many other schools and colleges, the kids have no place to store things before returning home, and can take home only so much because many of them are flying,” she said of Bryn Athyn College, attended by 218 students from 16 states and 14 foreign countries. “Many wait until the last minute to pack before they must be out, so they just dump everything.”

And that’s where The Cleaner Earth Company steps in.

Lermitte says the project personifies the philosophy of the two-year-old company which is to provide clients in the Greater Delaware Valley with eco-friendly cleaning services and techniques. Among other practices, the company uses non-toxic products (some custom-created), equipment made with recycled materials as much as possible, carpools for employees, dries its cleaning rags on clotheslines and recycles paper as well as approved plastics and metals.

For more information about the initiative beginning May 21, and about The Cleaner Earth Company (www.thecleanerearthcompany.com), call 267-229-7968.