BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – When college students move out of their apartments in Burlington each spring, many leave behind piles of discarded items. This year, the city hopes to get ahead of the exodus and prevent the annual move-out mess.
“You always have more things than you think you do, you’re going to need more trash collection,” said Bill Ward of Burlington Permitting and Inspections.
This year, Ward hopes to make a difference by reaching out to the owners of properties that most often have trash left behind.
“We see the proper notice, makes all that difference with the property manager and property owner being active with the tenants,” Ward said.
Ward wants property owners to let tenants know that leaving trash or unwanted items is not acceptable and to provide trash collection. Otherwise, the property owners could face fines.
Property owner Charlie Handy is heeding the city’s warning to avoid having to pay those fines. His company is paying two employees to drive around to all their properties with a truck each day beginning this week to collect unwanted items.
“If this stuff is garbage, we take it to the dump. If this stuff is good, we try to recycle it, give it to people who need it. Most of them when they get to the Vermont Refugee Resettlement, you know because they can use it for the newcomers. And the rest of it we take it the recycle places,” Handy said.
Another way the city and UVM try to get ahead of the mess is with the annual move out trash day along Loomis Street. Students can bring anything to give away or put directly into a garbage truck.
“The moment I walked in, people were like, ‘Can we take that off your hands?’ Like, yeah, of course. I think it’s nice to be able to share with everyone in the community and like see what stuff people have,” said Leila Elazar, a UVM junior.
Other students who live nearby say it’s important to keep the city clean.
“We love our like street and our house. So definitely leaving as clean as we found is important,” said Annie Rudolph, a graduating senior at UVM.
Rudolph and Alexi Angell saw in their lease that they couldn’t leave anything behind, so they took advantage of the city’s collection day.
“We’ve had like all this furniture kind of laying around in our attic and basement. So when we got the little flyers for this, we’re like score! Like this is perfect,” Angell said.
The city says last year they only levied a couple of fines, but this year they are getting serious about making sure property owners are taking care of their units.