I recently moved into my second long-term apartment and made a promise to myself to reduce plastic and waste in general after seeing how much was lost in the pipe bursts in the last place. I have been doing an audit on my belongings and identifying things that are single-use or are not sustainable. Here is what I have learned and have done so far.

In general I have been mastering facebook marketplace. I love that it’s like online thrifting, and involves traveling to new places (to pick the items up). It is also way safer than say craigslist and has a good Free Stuff section. 

In my recent move, I was able to sell a lot of what was heavy and/or that I picked up from the Free Stuff section. I made sure to make it easy for the buyer by offering wire/online payment options such as paypal and venmo: although for smaller amounts venmo is much better! 

For auditing your belongings you would want to look at things that are single-use. For me this was battery operated candles. There were 9 of them in a set I bought off amazon, They also took 2 AA batteries, which meant 18 batteries in total, batteries come in a variety of pack sizes but can also be expensive! I then wondered if amazon had rechargeable candles and they do. While you get three less than the original 9 in a set, I found I didn’t really use all of them in the space. 

Also look at the longevity of an item – the battery operated candles may be OK for short-term use, but are you really going to keep throwing out 18 batteries at a time? If you put the batteries in all at once, there’s a chance that they will all die at once. There are also many articles on pinterest and elsewhere on the internet about home waste audits. Check out my Home Waste Audit board below! 

#zerowaste, #lifestyle, #fund, #facebook, #marketplace, #reducereuserecycle