We’re well into the season for spring cleaning and now is the perfect time to declutter your home environment and unearth all those dormant goods lying around your house and move them onto a new home. You know, those items that are in good condition, still functional and useful but just not something you want or need anymore, but you can’t bear to send to landfill or don’t have the time or energy to sell or give away.
With statistics like below (coming from the War on Waste):
– Australia’s waste growing at double the rate of our population,
– over 85% of furniture placed kerbside not being recycled and instead going to landfill,
– 700 thousand tonnes of e-waste in Australia per year, and
– 36,000KG of clothes thrown out every hour (not to mention 2700 Litres of water to produce one item of clothing)
It’s no surprise more Australians are embracing their inner “Mottainai” (pronounced moat-tie-nigh, a Japanese term for regret over wasting something before deriving its full value) and looking for meaningful ways to offload their unwanted goods.
The upcoming National Recycling Week also provides another great motivation to offload all your functional and useful unwanted goods and avoid all that wonderful treasure going to waste. The idea of passing on what you no longer want or need, to someone who does want it, is a fantastic form of sustainability, because the reality is, perfectly functional and useful items are ending up in landfill simply because people no longer want or need them and it’s just easier to throw them away.
And the reality is, there isn’t really any ‘away’. All waste ends up somewhere and for perfectly serviceable items, that means all the effort and energy that’s gone into making that item may all have been in vain. There is no planet B, there are no more resources other than what the earth provides freely and we liberate from it. We have a duty of care to our planet to respect what is provided and ensure we’re using those resources as wisely as possible.
So, kill 2 birds with one stone, declutter your house and be part of the solution to Australia’s growing waste problem. Donate to WBGS and help us divert products from going to landfill, reduce CO2 emissions and save water on epic proportions. Our trucks can come to you and collect your goods, or you can drop items off at our warehouse — just complete the donationpage on our website and we’ll be in touch.
After you’ve donated your goods, come join us on Saturday 17 November, for the annual WBGS focal event — a garage sale on a grand scale. Help us keep those products circulating for the longest possible time and ensure all that embodied energy (e.g. water, electricity and natural resources) isn’t going to waste.
