Alex Freid
Durham, NH
Launching resourceful student led programs on college campuses to reduce waste and encourage reuse
Alex Freid was shocked by the number of perfectly good and reusable items being discarded by students during the moving-out days at the end of his freshman year at the University of New Hampshire. He learned that each May, as university students cleared out of their dorms and apartments, the amount of waste sent to the local landfill jumped from 25 tons per month to a staggering 105 tons. This inspired him to found Post-Landfill Action Network, or PLAN, a youth-led nonprofit that helps students create programs that reduce waste on campus. During the past three years, PLAN has helped divert more than 100 tons of reusable waste from landfills, donated more than 5 tons of food and clothing to local shelters, and saved the university $10,000 in waste disposal costs. Now Freid is turning PLAN into a national organization and implementing its model on other university campuses across the country. He estimates that by 2015 the program will have diverted 1,200 tons of waste from landfills.