“Solid waste is essentially garbage: waste produced in our homes, businesses and some industrial sources. Solid waste production in this country is growing in volume and in toxicity. More and more of our everyday products contain toxic chemicals, such as mercury or PBDEs (flame retardant chemicals), and these toxic products are combined with a plethora of other chemicals, which eventually impact public health and the environment.”
One non profit movement designed to help with waste management is freecycle.org which started in 2003 with 40 members and now has grown to 7 million in 85+ countries the network is free to join. Free cycle is recycling unwanted goods between the community for free the goods must be legal and age appropriate to the audience. It creates a sense of community feeling and makes sure that instead of landfill the goods are re used. The organisation is non for profit approved by the irs and is now tax deductible and solely relies on the donations.
The members say “By giving freely with no strings attached, members of The Freecycle Network help instill a sense of generosity of spirit as they strengthen local community ties and promote environmental sustainability and reuse. People from all walks of life have joined together to turn trash into treasure.”
Some of the included trash to treasure is: lamps, cutlery, driers, heaters, cushions and even strange things like hotel slippers. You’re bound to find something you want or like in a group near you and its free!
As a result of freecycle.org , they are currently keeping over 500 tons a day out of landfills! This amounts to five times the height of Mt. Everest in the past year alone, when stacked in garbage trucks!
The online platform is designed so that the real communities are structured with team moderaters and members
The community relies on some permanent staff but mainly volunteers including web, graphic and film makers to get across the message of free cycle as seen below:
https://www.freecycle.org/about/promovideo
Free sign up, free membership, free recycling, freeing the world from waste designed by people who want to make a difference check it out at:
- FreeCycle, 2015, Freecycle, 20/4/15, https://www.freecycle.org/
- Toxic action centre, 2012, The problems with waste, 21/4/15, http://www.toxicsaction.org/problems-and-solutions/waste
Indonesia Global Design Studio 
It’s always awesome to see people and organisations Upcycling/Recycling rather than tossing things in the rubbish. It would be cool to see what actually prompted the people to start up the organisation but I’m definitely going to look at their site and see how I can help.