Even after two earthquakes Thursday, hordes of faculty, staff and students crowded into UC Berkeley’s seismically unsafe Campbell Hall Friday for the second day of the free stuff giveaway.
Despite the steady flow of office supplies and furniture leaving the hall, at 3 p.m. when organizers closed the event, the hall still contained enough supplies — including binders, paper and cabinets — to supply a small corporate building. The general public will have the opportunity to take these supplies on Saturday.
Among the first items to go were large pieces of office furniture such as desks and chairs. Co-ops and fraternities composed a large portion of the line and took most of the office furniture, said Sara Seacat, member of an environmental sustainability campus group called Go! Team.
The most popular item that patrons walked out with were chairs, said Claire Porter, an organizer of the event and manager for ReUSE.
“We got rid of over 107 chairs,” she said.
Visitors also took decorations, posters and even silverware, Seacat added.
She added that visitors to the hall have taken over 1,562 pounds of office supplies, excluding furniture.
Porter said that she was glad to see so many usable supplies going to a happy home instead of piling into a landfill.
The third and last day of the event at Campbell Hall will open its doors tomorrow at 11 a.m. and, when doors lock at 3 p.m., items that are left over and non-recyclable will be trashed.
Among the items left for Saturday scavengers are more than 100 books, around 200 file and hanging folders and approximately 20 wooden desks, according to Kimberly Lam, an event organizer and manager of campus sustainability group, ReUSE.
Although there are many stacks of metal desks left, they are only available to campus faculty and staff, Lam said. Metal desks are exclusively available for campus staff because the university wants to keep these expensive utilities for campus use.
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