Choose to Reuse
The original Harvard Reuse List was created by Harvard
student Henry Xie, Class of 2011, as a class project. Below is Henry’s
description of why he started this project:
"Before coming to Harvard I had never had to buy a textbook. As a freshman, I was surprised that there was no better and more efficient system in place than the COOP. Selling used textbooks over email lists is annoying and inefficient, whereas buying books online at Craigslist, Amazon.com, or eBay requires shipping fees and delivery times which may not be convenient for students that use shopping period to settle on which courses to take.
"In an effort to solve this problem, I wanted to create an online platform facilitating direct and reliable inter-student trade on campus, increasing the welfare of the student body by avoiding unnecessary intermediary agents, while promoting local reuse and community sharing on campus. The idea was to make the entire student community better off, while boosting resource efficiency on campus and raising environmental awareness.
"As my CS 50 final project, I was able to construct a website called H-Market (www.h-marketonline.com) during winter break 08-09. The design was plain, allowing Harvard students to post online ads about what they wish to buy or sell. The response was positive and the site had grown to around 400 users in just a couple of weeks. Moreover, I was contacted by several members of staff at Harvard which liked my idea and thought of the possibility of expanding the service to staff as well.
"As such, I volunteered to improve and expand H-Market to include the entire Harvard community in the summer of 2009. With the support of Office for Sustainability and Harvard Strategic Procurement, the site is now located on the Office for Sustainability's website, under http://green.harvard.edu/reuselist.
"Special thanks to Christine Benoit (Strategic Procurement), Lev Rickards (Office for Sustainability), and Rob Gogan (University Operations Services), who have helped me and made this project possible."
