Cathy Clarkin (Co-Founder and Executive Director of Accelerate Climate Solutions) recently underwent her ninth time moving since she’s been with her partner. With all that moving, she’s well aware of the waste that gets generated. In previous moves, when they are done with the moving and finished with the packaging they would freecycle it. Freecycle, and similar organizations, such as “Don’t Dump That”, allows you to give anything you don’t need to others to prevent it from going into a landfill. However, because packaging material isn’t very durable and has limited reuses, they wanted something that was more sustainable, reusable, and durable. They had lots of blankets, towels, sheets, and clothes they realized they could use for a low-waste substitute to packaging material. After hearing that you could rent bins from moving companies, they asked the moving companies if they could do something like that. Generally these were only for commercial moves, but the company allowed them to use it for a modest extra fee to cover transporting the empty bins to and from the home before and after the move. They did a lot of the packaging themselves so they could use their own no-waste packing materials. Despite encouraging the movers to do the same, they weren’t entirely successful and ended up with a big pile of packing paper, which they were able to freecycle with ease.
Overall, here are some of her key takeaways from the move:
Local move: rent reusable bins from your moving company, or another external company.
Moving far: get boxes and packaging through Freecycle or other community sharing groups.
Packing: do your own packing so you can utilize your clothes, blankets, and towels as packing material.
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