Saving the Planet With Global Yard Sales

It was another weekend of yard sales and thrift stores and the dawning realization that in buying a shirt for 50 cents and a baby toy for a nickel, I have discovered another easy economical way of offsetting my carbon footprint.

Yard sales and reusing goods has become popular for two reasons: everyone is broke and most of us are concerned about the impact we are having on the planet (a.k.a our carbon footprint). Manufacturing new products uses up vital energy resources releases toxins into the air, increasing the nation’s overall carbon emissions and contributing to global warming.

So why do it if we don’t have to?

Sustainable goods with low or neutral carbon footprints are also increasing in popularity but they do little to rid us of the billions of tons of waste we already have. Living in a consumer society as we do, we have an urge to buy things we don’t need from companies we don’t really like at prices we can’t really afford. The end result being, we throw these items away and they clog landfills and reduce recycling rates.

But a yard sale is a form of recycling most of us can get behind.

Yard sales, reuses and recycle as they reduce the amount of unsustainable products in landfills. They save money for customers and make money for the owners. The yard sale process feeds our consumer need to buy but doesn’t cost too much and helps a neighbor get rid of their unwanted items responsibly. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

The concept of yard sales to reduce carbon emissions has gone viral with waste exchange sites popping up all over the web offering people and companies the chance to dispose of goods in other places than the local landfills. Exchanging goods reduces disposals costs for businesses as it helps ease the carbon emission burden on the planet. Waste.net is one example of this online recycling craze and it offers both exchange as well as purchase of previously used goods and industrial scrap for reuse.

It’s like one huge yard sale for businesses except the yard is the internet and the junk is industrial. A perfect green solution for a consumer society. So rather than thinking a morning at the yard sales is a cheap way to get that extra cooler for camping or save money on clothes your little guy will grow out of in a few weeks anyway, it may be better to see the healthy planet saving job you are doing by spending just a buck to reuse, reuse, recycle and of course, offset carbon footprints.