On Jan. 18, the Center for Community and Civic Engagement (CCCE) hosted its first-ever clothing grab in the Goodhue superlounge. The event allowed the CCCE to take out some of the many pounds of clothing stored in Goodhue’s basement and provided students with a ‘take what you need, pay what you want’ way to access winter gear and refresh their wardrobes.
“I thought it was fun, it’s nice to buy reused clothing, and it’s good for the environment. Plus, there was a lot of great stuff there,” Olivia Bremer ’28 said.
The clothing grab comes as a winter-clothing-only rendition of the long-running program Lighten Up. According to Erica Zweifel, assistant director of community impact, Lighten Up was started by the Student Activity Office (SAO) over 20 years ago to help reduce waste. Since then, it has transformed into a larger-scale event and has saved over 23 tons of waste from the landfill. It primarily operates at the end of Spring Term and allows students to donate school supplies, clothing, bedding and other dorm room essentials that they no longer have use for. The CCCE then hosts a garage sale-like event, reselling these items to students who might be able to make use of them and donating the profits to a variety of local organizations. Both Lighten Up and the clothing grab event aim to keep potential waste out of landfills, provide students with a more affordable way to get what they need and raise money for Carleton’s non-profit partners.
“It’s about trying to encourage students to find ways that are a little more sustainable and also financially cheaper to get stuff they might need for their dorms, in a win-win style of thrifting,” Rilke Grimlund ’26, a CCCE Food and Environmental cohort fellow said.
Last year, the CCCE donated over $31,000 to local non-profit organizations such as Special Olympics, Project Friendship, Northfield Union of Youth, Growing Up Healthy and the Northfield Community Action Center (CAC). The organizations contribute volunteer time to help the CCCE organize the donations on racks and help set up Lighten Up. Some nonprofit partners receive a portion of the proceeds from these sales, while others receive items. One CAC program known as Operation Backpack receives bundled school supplies and backpack donations which they redistribute to families in need. Last year, the CCCE donated over 1,000 pounds of donated school supplies to Operation Backpack.
“Raising money for our non-profits is just one goal of keeping our things out of the landfill,” Erica Zweifel, assistant director of community impact at the CCCE and current Mayor of Northfield, said.
The items for sale during the clothing grab came from a variety of sources; about half came from Carleton, and half came from a new community partnership. Carleton clothing sources include clothing left over from Lighten Up, donations received through the laundry room-based Clothing Recovery Network and boxes abandoned in Student Storage.
Off-campus, the CCCE has begun partnering with M&M Resources Trinkets and Treasures in Dundas, Minnesota, which is a thrift store that primarily focuses on non-clothing items such as tools and small furniture.
The partnership with M&M Resources is a pilot program, new this year, that assesses whether Carleton could be a good resource for keeping clothing and textiles out of landfills. The partnership began following the closure of the Clothes Closet, the textile recycler the CAC historically used for their thrift shop. The owners of the Clothes Closet determined that the Faribault Goodwill was the best site for clothing they were unable to sell or store, and they reached out to Carleton to see if students might be interested in helping with transportation. According to Zweifel, M&M Resources then reached out to the CAC, wondering what to do with their own textile donations, and the CCCE agreed to help both organizations. Now, every two weeks, a van goes to the Clothes Closet, loads up unsold textiles and drops them off in Faribault. It then stops at M&M Resources on the way back and picks up their donations, which are brought back to campus.
According to Zweifel, this partnership resulted in the CCCE’s storage of over 500 pounds of clothing and motivated the planning and organization of the clothing grab. They hoped to plan a Goodwill Blue Bins-style event with low preparation and high clothing turnover to attempt to sell half to a third of the current clothing stock to free up some space in storage to accept more donations in the future. The event’s success will help to determine the future of an ongoing partnership with M&M Resources by gauging demand on campus.