在“什么都不买”的自由世界里拒绝“买买买”(2)

Giving away the stuff that you no longer want is nothing new. Charities like the Salvation Army and Goodwill rely on these kinds of donations. And social media has made it easier for people to find free stuff on sites like Craigslist or through groups like Trash Nothing. But Buy Nothing turns the act of decluttering into a way to meet and befriend your neighbors. Because each group is geographically limited, sometimes encompassing only a few city blocks, and members are allowed to join only a single group, an active group can become a tight-knit trading post where a decorative birthday banner could make the rounds, shared repeatedly for months until it mysteriously disappears, as happened in one Brooklyn group earlier this year.
“We have plenty right here within each of our local communities to sustain us,” said Liesl B. Clark, one of the founders of the Buy Nothing Project. In the language of Buy Nothing, everything we possess has value, if you can find the person who needs it. “If we can reuse and refurbish and fix and repair and just keep recycling these items, nothing needs to be discarded,” Ms. Clark said.