A final option is Freecycle. The Freecycle Network has over 5000 groups around the world that match people getting rid of old items with those who want it. You won’t make any money with this one, but it may keep things that you think are junk from going into the landfill.
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I ended up offering up five via Freecycle.org. of which I gave away two. I did make it a point to greet the freecyclers face to face which I don’t normally do when giving other things away like old clothes and plant starts or whatever. It was my first interesting encounter of the day.
Two lovely ladies turned up on my doorstep and were very excited to get books. They also wanted to give me some. Not Book Night books, just books that they had. I didn’t need any of the books they had so they asked me how they could give them away. I did not know I was becoming an expert on book giving, these were my first two.
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While you’re at it, divorce yourself from middle men (and women).
Why not dump things directly? Craigslist is a forum for posting classifieds, services and goods swapping with branches specific to Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel. Post things you want taken away, for free or for a price. Freecycle is a nonprofit that’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of garbage bins. When I lived in recycling-crazed Ireland, rather than paying to dispose of 140 cardboard shipping boxes at the county waste center, I posted on Dublin Freecycle. Four different guys responded and in a matter of days, carted away all the cartons. This stuff works. There are Freecycle groups active in Cairo, Damascus, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ankara.
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Big Stuff and Old Threads
Furniture, appliances and clothing may be broken, dated and outgrown, but still have plenty of use left in them. If the clothing isn’t threadbare, wash and donate it to a resale charity like Goodwill Industries or the Salvation Army. An alternative is to consign clothing through a shop or sell it through a neighborhood coop or online resale site. You can create a swap recycling system for children’s clothes with neighbors, family or school friends. Furniture can go to charity resellers like Housing Works or Salvation Army, church bazaars, online sales or to The Freecycle Network. If the furniture is trashed enough to be trash, break it down and put appropriate materials in various recycling bins for metals and plastics. Untreated wood and some fabrics might go in your compost pile. Household appliances that no longer work go to scrap metal recyclers or municipal dumps that handle those items.
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Ecological and economic arguments aside, Goodall’s suggestion that the UK may have reached the point of maximum resource use throws up lots of interesting questions. Most fundamentally: is it definitely true? How can we be sure that consumption won’t soar to new, even greater, highs when the global economy eventually picks up? And if we really have reached a peak, how did we get there? Was it just a matter of shifting to a more service-based economy? Can the Internet – or even decades of green campaigning – claim the credit? Or could it be that our densely packed little island is running out of space for new buildings, vehicles and bulky goods? Could eBay [an online auction and shopping website] and Freecycle [a network that diverts reusable items from landfills] be a factor, helping to keep more goods in circulation for longer? Or the fact that more of us are living in cities?
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Before you spend money on concrete, it’s worth trying to Freecycle some–people rarely purchase just the right amount of materials for a particular project, and even a quarter of a bag of concrete is going to do you just fine.
To mix the concrete, get out an old bucket, an old cup, and a paint stirrer. Measure out an amount of concrete that will fill your mold (Do you know how to fill a mold with water and then pour it into a measuring cup to find the volume? Science in action!), and just enough tap water, a little at a time, to give the concrete a brownie batter-like consistency. This is actually the only part of the project that’s messy, since concrete mix is dusty, so do this on the porch.
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