In the Prescott laundry room, there are both formal and informal places where waste collects. The formal ones are a trash can and two small recycling bins by the door to the room. There is also a stack of compost buckets, but it looks like those are meant to be taken to individual mods, not used in the laundry room. The informal waste collection place is a cardboard box and a pile of miscellaneous clothing. The cardboard box has a sign on it that says “DON’T LEAVE STUFF BEHIND. THIS AREA IS NOT A FREE PILE!”. I don’t know why the box is there if people aren’t supposed to put stuff in it but it looks like the box and that corner is being used for unwanted things anyways.
The pile of clothes next to the box is a good example of the broken window theory that was brought up during class last week. Because there is a box and a few things in that corner, there might be less hesitation to add unwanted items to the pile. Clearly, the presence of clothes next to the box is more influential than the sign on the box.
With the informal waste collection place, I think the assumption is that other students will be the ones to take the stuff. If people expected it to be taken care of with the rest of the trash, they would just put it there.