Students gathered in White Plaza to browse tables of goods, clothes, and books and enjoy food and dessert at the fourth quarterly Big Swap on Feb. 21.
An initiative under the Office of Sustainability, Big Swap brought the Stanford community together to both donate items and look through other donated goods to optimize student reuse. This year, Big Swap brought food from Stanford Street Meats and Froyo-Cycle, as well as live music.
Living Lab fellow Julia Lecana Hok ’23 M.S. ’25 organized the first-ever Big Swap Spring of 2025 as a project for the fellowship. The fellowship focuses on reuse with the goal of transforming how students participate in reuse by building new infrastructure and educating students.
Living Lab fellow Kai Blankenship ’26 took over the project this year after Hok’s graduation.
“The mission [of Big Swap] is to provide an opportunity for students to reuse in a free way as well, by not participating in a profit model, like a thrift store, but a pure swap model,” Blankenship said. “It allows students from all backgrounds to participate and come find goods that they might need.”
Past Big Swaps have received funding from the previous neighborhood system, but since the University discontinued the system in August 2025, organizers have had to look elsewhere for funding. For this Big Swap, the Associated Students of Stanford (ASSU) sponsored food and music and also assisted with table rentals, while FashionX hosted an upcycling station.
“It’s really about finding all these new partnerships to make Big Swap bigger and better every time,” Blankenship said.
Edith Chamberlain ’27 attended the first Big Swap last year and volunteered this time as head of marketing. Chamberlain also serves as a sustainable community intern. “ I just really love sharing it with people because I love it so much,” she said.
“We even had a volunteer who came to swap and then asked how she could help and stayed the entire event. We’re really lucky to have so many great volunteers.” Blankenship said.
The organizers estimated this Big Swap to be the largest turnout yet, with roughly 600 students in attendance and 2,000 pounds of items diverted from landfills.
“Big Swap is an event that fosters not just reuse and sustainability but also community building because everyone who goes is just having a good time finding things, talking to each other. I think it’s a really great way to get out into the community of Stanford and tidy up your life along the way,” Chamberlain said.
Dalila Gulati ’29 attended this Big Swap to support a friend volunteering. “I came to see her and get froyo because I love Froyo-Cycle,” Gulati said.
Rahm Sheinfeld ’29 stopped by to drop off donations and browse. This was his first time at Big Swap. “It had more items than I thought it would have, and I was just happy to see a lot of people coming to participate in sustainable practices,” Sheinfeld said.
The Living Lab Fellowship is currently trying to build infrastructure so students can practice reuse in between Big Swaps. “Right now, we’re trying to launch swap stations across a bunch of different dorms. We want to make it a part of daily life,” Blankenship said.