When Calvin Holmes, who first came to USC in January as the Director of Mailing and Material Management Services at USC, learned that Surplus Sales was discontinued in 2020 during the pandemic, he realized it had been essential to USC\u2019s sustainability mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrior to us re-resuming Surplus for move out, all those items would go to waste, right? They will go to a landfill,\u201d said Holmes. \u201cUs being able to provide this service offers us some opportunity to divert waste and then give back to the community. So give it back to the students. Give it back to the staff, faculty. It\u2019s the best way for us to repurpose everything that we have on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Holmes says that most of their furniture and items come from on-campus dorms or schools within the university looking to offload used furniture or supplies.<\/p>\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/EHBLYFPNMRHJ5ESKU3VXBFK6PU.png\")
USC Surplus Sales features items donated from dorms and schools within USC. (Photo by Asiana Guang) <\/p>\n
For many who chose to donate, Surplus Sales will schedule a time to view the items before accepting them. They will then pick up the registered items through appointments only. <\/p>\n
Second-hand stores like USC Surplus Sales play a key role in efforts to reduce waste and the environmental impacts of new product consumption.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecond-hand stores are important sustainability efforts because there are so many impacts and externalities of conventional furniture consumption that go unnoticed,\u201d said Kyra Ahrens, an environmental studies and policy student at UC Irvine, which also has many sustainability programs. \u201cSecond hand stores are a great alternative to buying things new because it eliminates any more emissions, waste, and just stuff overall that would\u2019ve been created if something was bought new.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahrens also emphasized that reuse can often be more effective in reducing waste than recycling.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecond-hand stores have a greater impact on sustainability than recycling because it sort of like stopping the issue at the source rather than putting a band aid over a problem caused by the source,\u201d said Ahrens. \u201cBy buying second-hand, you\u2019re not creating any more stuff that would\u2019ve eventually then needed to be recycling\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond sustainability, the Surplus Store draws in interest through its cost and convenience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the whole nature of the second-hand marketplace is that it\u2019s a lot more affordable,\u201d said Lucas Damasco, a junior studying business administration and AI applications at USC. \u201cIt\u2019s just the convenience factor as well as affordability that I definitely value.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely better than ordering from Amazon, [or] fast fashion, [or] very convenient IKEA type locations, just because you\u2019re reducing shipping costs as well as the green grass emissions that go into actually buying something online,\u201d said Damasco. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"USC Surplus Sales marked its return with an opening last Friday, selling discounted second-hand items that ranged from…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":353888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,5337,172949,1763,11016,124697,24374,172948,172950],"class_list":{"0":"post-353887","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-losangeles","13":"tag-surplus-sale","14":"tag-sustainability","15":"tag-usc","16":"tag-usc-events","17":"tag-usc-news","18":"tag-usc-surplus-sale","19":"tag-usc-sustainability"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115488837454906763","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}