About SWAP

What does the acronym S.W.A.P. stand for?

From 1981-1995 the Surplus Program of UW-Madison collected a large variety of unwanted materials from the campus. In January of 1996, Surplus joined forces with another redistribution program on campus (known as the Solid Waste Alternatives Project) to expand its collection and redistribution effort.

The Solid Waste Alternatives Project was initiated by UW-Madison's Environmental Management program in November 1994 as an effort to find markets for low value surplus property. It was successful in not only finding these markets, but also in developing new technologies for marketing surplus property over the internet. This website is a direct result of that project. The Sales Program adapted the innovations of the SWAP Project and applied them to the new combined Surplus Services/SWAP program, now known simply as SWAP. SWAP now stands for Surplus With A Purpose to reflect our initiative to repurpose surplus university goods.

If it's Surplus With A Purpose, what is the purpose?

First and foremost, SWAP is an environmental steward for the University. Our overall focus is to serve the University by reducing its environmental footprint. We do this by finding new homes for equipment and furniture by redistributing it to other departments, selling it to the public, or selling or donating the equipment to non-profit agencies.

SWAP also has taken on the enormous challenge of being the sole recycler of all electronic waste streaming from campus.  While we try to find homes for much of the equipment the vast majority is outdated or broken and these items need to be recycled properly. Recycling computer equipment is easy. Proper recycling of computer equipment is difficult and costly. It involves setting high standards for our electronic scrap vendors that mandate no burying, dumping, or shipping overseas.

HIPAA and FERPA laws also mandate that all health, financial, and student data be kept confidential so all data on data-containing devices must be removed or the device must be destroyed. Destroying data on hard drives and other media-containing devices is a crucial responsibility that we take very seriously. Working collaboratively with our electronic scrap vendor SWAP uses software and hardware devices such as wiping programs, hard drive crushers and shredders to ensure that no data leaves the University.

How Does SWAP Redistribute the State's Surplus Property?

For the benefit of all citizens of Wisconsin, SWAP first tries to locate other campus departments, state agencies or tax-supported organizations that may benefit from another department's unwanted materials. If SWAP cannot find a state agency, school, municipality or non-profit group that can use these materials, the surplus property is made available for sale to the general public. SWAP sells surplus property through our online auction website.  You will see items from the ordinary to the unbelievable; Items such as file cabinets, desks, air conditioners, etc., to machinery, laboratory equipment, farm equipment, computers, athletic equipment and things that are virtually indescribable.

How much material does SWAP handle?

SWAP collects over 20 tons of surplus material each week. Over 92% of those materials are either sold for reuse or recycled. In years past, much of this material was sent to the landfill (or collected by dumpster divers.) About 22% of the material handled by SWAP is computer equipment.