By
Ayse Guner
Arizona Daily Wildcat
On Dead Day - Thursday - as the daylight vanishes and the moonlight brightens the streets, two UA students will slowly approach the 40-yard trash bins that sit behind each residence hall.
With bare hands, David Brabec, an agriculture senior, and girlfriend Christine Howison, a graduate student in agricultural education, will dig into items that other students throw away. They will run the risk of being cited by the police because their actions are considered trespassing.
These two self-described "garbage diggers" have been at it for four years.
They said students throw away mass quantities of useful items that could be re-sold, donated to charities or re-used.
The "diggers" have found still-usable computers, watches, textbooks, calculators, furniture, appliances, rugs, clothing, food and even money.
With summer break and the mandatory move-out date looming, students in residence halls find using the garbage more convenient.
Brabec and Howison think students and the university should be more responsible in terms of thinking of other people who might need and use these discarded items.
"We are living only 100 miles away from a third-world country," Brabec says. "'Johnny' on the south side might need the textbook or the notebook that I'm throwing away.
"We need to have the extra time to find someone who can use the stuff," he adds.
Because of this, the couple proposed the UA and the Salvation Army come up with a pilot program that would eventually eliminate the trash bin use and the presence of police who keep an eye on the containers, and keep the majority of items away from being dumped into landfills.
"For everything we do, there is a consequence - it is that simple," Brabec says.
"The UA is aware of the amount of the trash generated," says Howison, who is also a research technician at the Arizona Cancer Center. "If they worked so much with churches and donate so much, it would eliminate the Dumpster."
Because the university puts out these large trash containers only once a year, this is the time to create the program, Brabec says. Eventually, students would have garbage bags in each residence hall to drop their donations into, and Salvation Army trucks would pick up the bags.
"Wouldn't it be nice to say that UA has not only a good basketball team but also has an excellent way of dispersing?" Howison asks.
Poking through the garbage is something that Brabec has not only done over the course of his university life, but throughout his youth. He began collecting discarded items when he was 10 years old.
As a child growing up with a single mother in Phoenix, Brabec noticed people in his neighborhood stacking up furniture that looked like new near the trash bins. He then brought back home whatever he thought was still usable.
Soon, his practice was so well-known in the area that people began to leave their old furniture by his door.
"I am just a guy who loves to pick up things that others consider trash and find a use for them," he says. "I would consider that sourcing (conserving)."
He saved some of the usable items and sold the rest of them at yard sales. By age 16, Brabec had collected about $6,000, and he bought his first car and car insurance with that money, he says.
Similarly, Howison learned of recycling when she went to the University of Missouri. For four years, she collected cans in her residence hall and met with a homeless man named Stanley every Monday morning at 7, who would take the cans to a grocery store to sell.
Brabec drives a truck and an 18-foot trailer to fit the items he and Howison collect from the campus-area bins. Every night for a week, they drive around campus and nearby apartments to find treasures.
"The ultimate issue is not to personally gain from the trash, but saving from what's thrown away," Brabec said.
