Penn State Behrend’s end-of-semester spring cleaning will again benefit bargain-hunters, the environment and United Way of Erie County by stocking the fifth annual Trash to Treasure indoor yard sale.
Trash to Treasure is a Penn State initiative to keep the University community’s unwanted but still useful items out of the waste cycle. The local Trash to Treasure sale will be held in Penn State Behrend’s Erie Hall on Saturday, May 14.
The May 14 event opens at 7:30 a.m.; admission is $5 per person between opening and 9 a.m. Free admission will be offered from 9 a.m. until the sale’s end at noon. From 11 a.m. to noon, attendees can fill a bag for $5.
All cash proceeds from Trash to Treasure benefit United Way of Erie County.
The bulk of the items to be sold at Trash to Treasure are donated by Penn State Behrend students as they move out of the campus' 10 residence halls and nine apartment buildings. “For any number of reasons, students have to leave behind small appliances, furniture, sporting equipment, clothes, cleaning supplies and even food,” said Ann Bolla Quinn, adviser to the Greener Behrend environmental service club. “Students are very generous about donating these items to the sale instead of throwing them away, because they recognize that they still have utility.”
Greener Behrend and the athletics staff are Trash to Treasure’s coordinators. Their volunteers will spend the week prior to the sale collecting, sorting, cleaning and pricing thousands of items. “It’s a lot of work, because it’s a lot of stuff,” Quinn said. “But when you look at it from the perspective that it’s a lot of stuff that won’t needlessly end up in Lake View Landfill, it becomes a hugely worthwhile project.”