UC Surplus has new mission
UC Surplus Management makes big changes to its operations as it steps up its mission to reduce, reuse and recycle
UC Surplus Management is making significant changes at its Cincinnati-area warehouse facility as part of its new operational goals designed to better serve the university.
The 200,000-square-foot Fishwick warehouse, located four miles north of UC’s Uptown campus, has been serving as a storage and central dispensary for the university’s used furniture, computer and laboratory equipment since 2013.
What wasn’t reused by another department at the university was sold at the popular monthly public walk-in sales — until now.
Surplus sales go online
“Public walk-in sales are now discontinued in lieu of our new live auction online sales,” says Teig Farrell, UC Surplus Management associate director. “Our new departmental mission to refocus some services while enhancing others is part of our UC First initiative — a cost-effective method to reduce, reuse and recycle.”
UC Surplus 2019 improved services include:
- Free-to-Department (FTD) program expanded. FTD walk-in days will still continue at the Fishwick warehouse and have been expanded to two days a week. Tuesdays, 8 a.m. to noon and Wednesdays, noon to 4 p.m.
- Recycling of materials including all metals and computer parts has been enhanced to expand UC's sustainability efforts, encourage responsible recycling and increase revenue back into the university.
- Secure hard drive shredding and data destruction is performed in-house in a secure area.
- Discontinued monthly public walk-in sales. Public sales for unwanted used merchandise are now held online. The new live auctions can be accessed, viewed and bid on anytime through UC Surplus, or the new GovDeals.com site.
“Everything we do here provides cost effective options to UC departments before they have the need to go out and buy new or use external vendors or services,” says Farrell regarding the UC Surplus changes. “And by enhancing our shredding and recycling services in-house we provide safe and efficient secure destruction of all hard drives, data tapes, disks and other devices containing sensitive data".
While discontinuing the monthly public on-site sales saves the university time and security issues, Farrell says it’s also much more convenient for the public. They can visit the live online auction site and bid on items anytime.
“The changes also help us get more of a market value for items as opposed to the monthly public sales we held before,” says Ryan Donovan, assistant controller for UC Finance. “The auction format does more of a service to the university, as people are now actually paying what the item is worth.”
Purchased items by the public can then be picked up at the Fishwick dock, or personal shipping arrangements can be made at the cost of the purchaser through the website.
“Employees can sit at their desks and see all the FTD inventory online,” says Farrell. “Direct delivery to UC personnel is free but we do require that the employee come to visit the warehouse first before deciding on an item to avoid unnecessary shipping returns.”
For every circuit board that comes in there are valuable copper, mixed metals and parts that bring in more than $7 a pound when broken down.
Everything we do here provides cost effective options to UC departments before they have the need to go out and buy new or use external vendors or services.
Teig Farrell
Red and black goes green
To help reduce the university’s overall footprint, Farrell and his team accept virtually all recyclables, including all metals, toners and cartridges, computer components and all battery types. Other items collected for recycling include cell phones, light bulbs, lab equipment, data tapes, computer monitors and more.
“Our team began recycling scrap metal in 2012, and it grew from there,” says Farrell. "Now component metals extracted from non-functioning equipment are recycled and sold at fair market value and are bringing profitable revenue back into the university.
“We have a number of folks from around campus who want to come over here and shred their old hard drives themselves,” says Farrell. “Because their information is very sensitive, they come over with the data storage components and put them through the shredding machine themselves with our safety supervision.”
Farrell credits Central Receiving as instrumental in the website’s backend operation success.
“And it’s our staff, Scott Clark and Brendan Weaver, and our UC student workers that have been the backbone behind the recycling process,” he says. “ Scott and Brendan’s knowledge and experience has helped our students get hands-on skills in the de-manufacture of all recyclables and computer components.
“For tech savvy students, it is good, practical experience that is also profitable for the university. We are looking at creating a co-op position down the road for a student in the college of business.”
For more information:
- UC Surplus Management & Central Storage
- GovDeal.com UC merchandise
Featured image at top: UC Surplus Management's Scott Clark, Brendan Weaver and Teig Farrell make big changes in managing UC's surplus merchandise as part of their UC First initiative to reduce, reuse and recycle — designed to serve the university first.
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