[culi]

There's lots of Library of Things projects around the country, but they're usually informal mutual aid type events. I think something much better organized and funded (maybe even some nice software to go along with it) could make a huge difference in our waste crisis

Also, we should be charging people for their trash. Both companies and consumers imo. It's kinda ridiculous to offload so much waste as an economic externality. I live near a university and every year I get to watch a new set of students move into the student housing. Towards the start of the school year the dumpsters are filled with Ikea and Amazon boxes form all the new furniture. At move out time they have to bring these absolutely massive metal containers (like 3x the size of a shipping container) for the students to through out all their furniture (most of which has been used for less than a year). It's particularly bad with this university since a fifth are international students.

80% of the furniture in my house was "rescued". We used to hoard it and sell it on Craiglist and the like. We once sold a $200 marble table we got for free. Also have two pairs of working air pods and a bunch of $100+ shoes (including some Jordans and a pair of Yeezys) that we just haven't gotten around to selling yet. We also have a bench press and weights, 2 working grills, and too many office chairs. All this and we still save every glass jar and use them as our cups.

Unfortunately, my housemates are not big fans of the mismatched furniture look, but I find it quite charming :(

It's wild how much waste could be averted if all that furniture was simply stored on a plot of land over the summer until the next wave of students came in and then we let them pick through it. We used to pick up everything we could sell, but it just became too much of an effort because of the sheer volume of furniture

[toast0]

Trash service isn't free; it's usually included in a rental though. If you make it too expensive (in dollars, time or transit), people will find ways to dispose of items without paying. Mattresses have a way of showing up in public right-of-ways almost everywhere, but I live in a semi-rural area, and there's so much crap dumped in my woods and mine aren't that bad; one of my neighbors did some development work in preparation of selling some small parcels out of his land and had to have like 13 derelict cars removed that had been dumped in the woods; on my property, the larger things I've seen a really long radiator, a bath tub, a pressure tank from an abandoned (unmapped too) 10 foot deep hand dug well that I also had the pleasure of filling at my expense.

Are there any thrift store 'charities' nearby? maybe they can arrange to pick up some of the furniture and sell it.

[fortran77]

We do pay for trash here, explictly. It's not "free", but I think every houshold is mandated to pay for some level of trash service as a form of a tax. You can pay more for larger bins, etc.

If we charged too much, it would encourage hoarding, wouldn't it?

[UweSchmidt]

If trash was expensive and cover the true externalities, we might more long-lasting products that are easy to disassemble, repair and recycle.

Maybe it's the general crappiness, the planned obsolescence in everything that makes us hold on to all sorts of "spare parts". Back in the day when producing items was hard, a wardrobe would be handed down through multiple generations. Hoarding wasn't feasible but also not necessary.

[benj111]

It would encourage fly tipping.