Please, be Kind, Courteous and Private; No direct messaging, Hate Speech, Bullying, Politics, Promotions, Spam, Buying, Selling and Trading is allowed. As the saying goes, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.The Earth, logically, appears to have depleting natural resources. If one affirms this, it follows that bigger population or higher consumption levels will deplete the Earth’s reso
urces. The results are obvious: first, infinite growth is impossible due to these constraints on physical resources; second, to avoid the rapid depletion of the Earth’s resources, we must limit population growth, reduce consumption, or both. However, We can personally reduce our dependence on limited resources such as oil, clean water and minerals, by considering the hierarchy of Reduce ~ Reuse ~ Recycle ~ Upcycle. Reducing what we buy, reusing what we have, recycling and upcycling what we always throw away as waste, will ultimately save more natural resources, create less pollution and consume less energy .Reducing is cutting back on the amount of trash we make, reusing is finding a new way to use trash so that we don't have to throw it out. To understand the difference between traditional recycling and upcycling, it may help to look at an example of each. Let’s say you receive a letter in the mail, open it, and realize there’s no need to keep it. Instead of throwing it away, toss this piece of paper into a recycling bin, and it will be sent to your local recycling center and reused to create recycled paper. This is an example of recycling.If we were to take a stack of old newspapers and fold them to create a biodegradable flower pot, this would be an example of upcycling. You are taking a simple material (newspapers) and creating something of higher quality (a flower pot) all on our own. Both recycling and upcycling reduces the amount of waste that ends up in landfills around the world. Also, both activities reduce the need for the production of new materials, which means there will be less pollution and carbon emissions produced by manufacturers. By just lurking in your local Buy Nothing Facebook group, it’s kind of like you’re in a thrift store 24/7, where everything is free. Not only will you save money by getting things you need for free from Buy Nothing, but you will also help reduce the demand for more of those items to be produced. When it comes to how you will actually get or give the item away, that’s up to you. You and the other person can decide to meet up in a public location in your area, or you can choose to meet at one of your homes. Meeting up with a stranger always comes at your own risk.
