I am a member of a “Buy Nothing” (BN) group on Facebook, which is where people in your local community offer items up for free and you can also “wish” for items in the event somebody else has it. The idea is to reduce waste (and save money) by relying on your community rather than going to the store. It’s basically Freecycling 2.0.

I did Freecyling back when I first moved to Baltimore and the main thing I remember is that I was trying to give away a TV and when the person who requested it found out I lived in the city, they backed out because they don’t drive in the city.

Turns out giving stuff away is actually pretty annoying! People back out all the time. Then I have to decide if I want to go through the hassle of re-offering it (9/10 times I don’t bother. Whomp whomp). Even if the person comes to pick up my thing without issue, I still have that feeling of being on the hook, like I have to sit around and wait for them. But that might have more to do with my general dislike of strangers coming to my house.

It’s also really interesting to me because people sometimes give away literal garbage or opened food items (??!?!). Like a 2L of ginger ale with one sip taken out of it. I mean I know the group is restricted to locals but I still don’t actually know these people.

Anyhoos, BN has a “treasure hunt” concept where you just put all your crap on your lawn and people can come by to pick through it. As I was decluttering I realized I had enough stuff for a treasure hunt so I planned one. It was successful! People came by and picked out a bunch of stuff. The remainder went right into a box in the trunk, not back into the house.

I took the leftovers to Goodwill. I have no problem with Goodwill being a for-profit enterprise (a lot of people think it’s a charity—it’s not, but they do create jobs) but I do feel better knowing that at least some of the stuff went to somebody else in my community. I also have to imagine a lot of my donations don’t ever get sold at Goodwill, at which point Goodwill will recycle them.

The thing with recycling, I’ve learned, is that we (the U.S.) send most of our garbage to China and China rejects the vast majority of it. Actually—upon a quick web search—China ended all recyclable imports in 2018. Also, this:

China’s policy shift shone a light on the fact that words such as “recycling” or “recyclable” had long been applied to aspirations as well as to reality. State and local governments didn’t track how much of the material they sent to China couldn’t be used. According to a 2020 report from Greenpeace, millions of tons may have gone to landfills and incinerators.

From Governing.com

So it basically all ends up in the trash anyway, but with the added bonus of all the energy/labor/emissions associated with transporting it all. It almost makes me not want to recycle? Like…just send it straight to the landfill.

Looking at my treasure hunt pile and knowing that all or most of it will end up in a landfill—even the items that people took will probably eventually get thrown away—really hammered home the importance of the first R: reduce. Don’t bring that stuff into your house in the first place.

I was really surprised at the stuff I had accumulated because I think I’m actually pretty good about not buying random things. It just builds up over time (a lot of it was cheap Halloween stuff, lawlz)

I’ve been trying to be better about this by just…trying not to need things—maybe that sounds silly to say, but the whole point of advertising is to create needs where there were none. So I try to avoid being beguiled by ads by forcing myself to wait for several days before buying something. For things I do need, I’m trying to get higher-quality or longer-lasting items (for that second R: reuse) so that I can keep them out of the landfill longer.

The uncomfortable part is that if I care so much about generating waste, we gotta stop drinking canned soda. I mean that’s like…. a pretty extreme life change for us. 😛