Bummer. Business at the landfills is way down now that we don’t have as much stuff to throw away.
But Good News for the Environment
You gotta take your good news where you can get it.
Finally, said Ben Boxer, spokesman for Fairfax County’s solid waste management program, the economy is forcing people to heed the environmentalists’ mantra: Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Repair! “A lot of these things that people throw away do have a valuable second life,” he said, “especially for those who, now more than ever, are going to be facing difficult times.”
In better times, Boxer has seen perfectly usable sofas crammed into dumpsters. But now, instead of ending up at the dump, stuff is being repaired and kept or traded on Web sites such as Freecycle.org, where as many as 70,000 people a week have been registering to swap stuff since the recession officially began in the fall.
Try Freecycle. It’s very cool.
