Welcome to Harvard's Recycling and Surplus Center, the store with no sticker shock

Boston Globe

23-06-2025

Elsewhere on Harvard's sprawling campus, administrators are battling countless crises threatening the elite university's bottom line.
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But here — among the foragers hauling away all the lamps, rugs, and T-shirts they can carry — that war over dollars feels very far away.
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'Harvard will outlast all of them,' said Garnett, who has tried to come to the center most weeks since 2005, back when it was located in an Allston parking lot. An antiques dealer with a warehouse in Lynn, Garnett generally seeks out small furnishings to resell, but on this visit, he stumbled across a geometric painting in a rainbow of colors.
He wasn't yet sure if he would try to flip it, or keep it to decorate his Chelsea condo.
An antiques dealer with a warehouse in Lynn, Wayne Garnett generally seeks out small furnishings to resell, but on this visit to Harvard's Recycling and Surplus Center, he stumbled across a geometric painting in a rainbow of colors.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
'It has helped me make a living, that's for sure,' he said of the center. 'It's been a central part of that.'
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The idea behind the center, which has existed in various forms for more than two decades, is to minimize the waste generated by students, professors, and administrators on the sprawling campus. When undergrads want to offload their mini-fridges at the end of the semester, a dorm wants to discard hundreds of air purifiers, or the Divinity School wants to ditch their pews, it all comes here.
The takers are many: Resellers like Garnett looking to make a quick buck. Do-gooders passing the donations on to nonprofits. And, of course, people squeezed by
'I still get a lot of people that will come by my office before they leave, and they're like, 'Do I need to check out? How much are these things?'' said Dailey Brannin, Harvard's recycling services supervisor and overseer of the center. 'And I'm like, 'Nope, it's all free.''
That's a boon for people like Miriam Nussbaum, who stopped by on a Thursday in late May — the height of the frenetic undergraduate move-out season. Nussbaum, who receives Supplemental Security Income, has enough money to cover her basics — rent, groceries, phone. But it's more of a stretch to afford 'things that make a space a home,' she said, like the rug and fake plant she unearthed to bring back to her studio apartment in Brookline public housing.
'A lot of people who are higher earners don't really think about the cost of the little…' She paused. 'The little everythings.'
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Mountains of books, a hockey stick, and a balloon inflater were all on offer at Harvard's Recycling and Surplus Center on a recent Thursday.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
And the center's got an embarrassment of everythings. On that Thursday in late May, a cat tree, balloon inflater, and baby grand piano were all on offer. A small library's worth of books, and bins upon bins of clothes — some of it with labels like Zara, Brooks Brothers, and Levi's — were also up for grabs.
Not everything was a gem, though, including a single boxing glove, an opened box of tampons, and a spiral notebook filled with math problems.
'If you can buy it in a store, or order it online, or have it fabricated, we've seen it,' said Rob Gogan, Harvard's onetime recycling and waste manager, who retired in 2020.
The selection wasn't quite this eclectic when the center got its start under Gogan. The way he tells it, 'It started because of carpal tunnel syndrome.'
Around the turn of the millennium, he said, many students were beset by the ailment — a result of using desktop computers on dorm-room desks not designed for keyboards.
So when the school ordered new desks, Gogan was tasked with disposing of several hundred old ones. He put them in the parking lot behind his office and let people know they were available to snag. Pretty soon, more furniture started coming his way, and the parking-lot setup turned into a full-fledged operation.
A cluster of lamps at Harvard's Recycling and Surplus Center.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
Today, the center is staffed by Brannin and another full-time employee, some volunteers, and two box truck drivers who make their way around Harvard's campus to pick up unwanted goods and shuttle them back to the center. In the last year, Brannin estimated, the drivers picked up more than 15,000 items.
Those items are as diverse as the cast of characters ransacking them. An Ebay merchant poring over the book bins, clutching a gadget that tells him the resale value of each title. A new mom starting a remote software engineering job, grabbing as many computer monitors as she could find. A nonprofit volunteer lugging away a scad of lamps for people in need.
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'It's a good day,' said Marty Blue, the nonprofit volunteer.
The crowds are nothing compared to pre-COVID, Brannin said, when the center had a lottery system to manage
the throngs of people. (In addition to welcoming the public on Thursdays, the center is open to nonprofits and Harvard affiliates on Mondays.)
The sparser attendance is just fine by regular patrons, who have fostered good-spirited 'community vibes,' Brannin said — so long as people stick to their own piles.
'We do get a lot of newcomers, still, and the people that have been coming for years will show them around, tell them how things work,' said Brannin. 'Or they'll say, 'Don't tell your friends, because we want to keep it to ourselves.''
People line up with shopping carts to enter Harvard's Recycling and Surplus Center on a recent Thursday.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
Dana Gerber can be reached at