The cycle begins again — seniors dump their trash as they move out and other students look through it to find furniture for next year.

Couches will disappear from curbs and years of clutter will flow from apartments to landfills.

Driving to a drop-off point for oversized garbage or getting to a Wal-Mart simply isn’t an option for students without flexible transportation.

“If you don’t have a car here, you have to get stuff from other people,” said Weinberg junior Chris Chou.

Working with Evanston, the Office of Student Affairs has arranged for the placement of five large trash bins from June 8-20 in off-campus areas where students live, said Cate Whitcomb, assistant to the vice president for student affairs.

Northwestern splits the costs with Evanston. Whitcomb said the university expects its half of the bill to be between $1,800 and $2,000 this year.

The containers will be placed along the 800 blocks of Hamlin Street and Foster Street, the 1000 block of Garnett Place and the intersections of Noyes Street and Maple Avenue and Noyes and Sherman Avenue, Whitcomb said.

She said Onyx Waste Services, Inc., NU’s waste management company, supplies and handles the bins. The transportation division of the Evanston Public Works Department will ensure no one parks where the containers go.

But move-out week is a prime time for many students to add to their collection of free furniture.

Communication senior Tamar Feinkind took most of her furniture from a friend’s basement, and when her kitchen table broke she just improvised by setting the table’s top on a smaller table.

And when Weinberg junior Jessica Cohn returned from studying abroad, she came home to an apartment without a bed.

“I didn’t have a bed and I didn’t have money,” she said. “So I slept on a cot for a month.”

Most students hope to sell what they can’t take with them when they depart from Evanston, but tight student budgets make for a limited market. The remainder will go in the trash bins.

Reach Elizabeth Gibson at [email protected].