At the end of each school year, there is a mass-exodus which occurs on the Ohio State Campus. In the matter of just one week, thousands of students who have just spent the past nine months sharing tight quarters in high-rise buildings, emerge from their dorms, carts full of their worldly possessions in tow. Everything must be cleared out. Needless to say, it is a waste palooza. Every year, without fail, the trash rooms of every building are piled high and overflowing. Because of course, it just doesn’t add up; most students are coming from a distance away, and everything they own must fit into one vehicle. They’ve often accumulated items they don’t want, or don’t need, or even if they do, can’t transport. Paying for storage is expensive, and usually, unnecessary. And so, into the dumpster it goes. It’s a somewhat less extreme, but similar situation off-campus as well. The fact is, college students are in constant transition. They don’t have a lot of money to spend, and usually move too often to make purchasing quality goods worthwhile. And so for several years, they follow the same patterns of buy cheap, trash, and repeat. But— what if a different method could be adopted? What if all of the material goods which OSU students need for relatively short periods of time could be rented, loaned, and exchanged, over and over again, thus expanding the lives of objects to serve far more students, and hopefully, drastically reducing the produced waste every year?
