Last Saturday, which incidentally was “Curb Day”, I was passing what was formerly a church (the quotations on its sign always made me smile) to note that the church was gone, replaced by a brand-spanking new self-storage facility.
Turns out we spend less time worshipping a spiritual deity and more time worshipping a consumer one, which I suppose comes as no surprise to those who can never find a parking spot at their local mall.
You can be forgiven for missing Curb Day – Saturday, May 16th. For one thing, it fell this year on Canadians’ Victoria Day holiday weekend. For another, its marketing campaign (does it have a marketing campaign?) could use a bit of help. Most of us, quite simply, have never heard of Curb Day.
Curb Day is the brainchild of a Rochester, New York father Mike Morone, who could no longer tolerate the incredible waste of useful stuff that routinely awaits pickup for transport to landfills. He created Curb Day – which he hopes will grow in popularity and participation – to entice people to put their outgrown, out-dated, out-used stuff at their curb. The rest of us – who see purpose and beauty in others’ discards – can then go “shopping” along the curb, helping ourselves to whatever we see that strikes our fancy with no impact to our finances.
Frankly, Curb Day for me is the night before garbage pickup when I’ve discovered an old Salada Tea box (real wood!) which now earns its keep as a coffee table, a dining room chair (a perfect match – after being reupholstered!) for my grandparents‘ hand-me-down dining set, a wicker laundry hamper…the list goes on.
We Curb Day shoppers require thick skins as we’re often referred to, not always affectionately, as dumpster divers and garbage pickers.
I’m bolstered, however, by my conviction that making use of others’ castoffs is about as green as one can get. The alternative, of course, is to send all these goodies to landfills. And landfills, my friends, are not pretty places, not even from space, where astronauts could more easily spot New York’s Fresh Kill’s Landfills before it was closed than they could see China’s Great Wall.
William Rathje knows landfills well, having enjoyed (really!) an illustrious 30-year career as a garbologist, picking through landfills to get a better sense of what we toss. He reports that 15% of what we throw away is food (you won’t find me digging through anyone’s garbage for the remains of their dinner….) and perfectly recyclable paper – newspapers, magazines and so on.
But much of what’s left curbside is perfectly usable stuff, says Curb Day booster Morone, who hopes that declaring a special day might remove some of the stigma of taking other people’s discards.
Of course, the downside is that we dedicated dumpster divers might face fierce competition for the good stuff – making last year’s Boxing Day stampede at Wal-Mart look like a schoolyard tussle.
For now, however, until Curb Day catches on, we can count on more treasure than trash.
Leslie Garrett is a national award-winning journalist, author and editor, based near Toronto, Canada. She is the author of The Virtuous Consumer: Your Essential Shopping Guide for a Better, Kinder, Healthier World and she has also written a dozen children’s books, including a biography of renowned environmentalist David Suzuki and “EarthSmart”, a book for young children on protecting the environment.
Visit: http://www.virtuousconsumer.com/
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