SOMETHING TO READ
You might be participating in today’s national spending blackout, but the founders of the Buy Nothing Project encourage us all to make buying nothing a year-round habit in the belief that a worldwide community of people reducing consumption can radically change the world.
In 2013, Rebecca Rockefeller and Liesl Clark created Buy Nothing, a gift economy operated on a hyperlocal scale to bring neighbors together. The movement doubled in size during the pandemic. It now has more than four million participants in 44 countries around the globe. “It’s like a radical new economy, except of course it’s an old economy that has been around forever,” says Rockefeller. “We’re just re-presenting it.”
The book The Buy Nothing, Get Everything Plan says the key to a joyful life and a planet of abundance is to pursue every possible alternative before buying something. The book is a compendium of ideas on how to refuse, reuse, make, and fix.
In an economy of barter, trades are based on what the trading partners establish as equivalent value. In the Buy Nothing economy, all gifts have equal value no matter their dollar amount in our current economy; nothing is monetized. In a gift economy, every member is a vital participant, no matter their social status or economic reality.
Gift economies are built on the assumption that there is enough for everyone, and if we share what we have, the act of sharing builds relationships between us, “relationships that will protect us, support us, provide for us, and magnify our joy.”
David Graeber, anthropologist, debt-resistance activist, and writer, said, “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
https://buynothingproject.org/
SOME THINGS TO DO
(from buynothinggeteverything.com/why) We are the founders of the Buy Nothing Project, and this book represents what we’ve learned through 12+ years of our freely-given, unpaid, volunteer labor to, among other things:
Document and spread awareness about plastic pollution in our local environment;
Develop and share a host of reduce-reuse-rethink solutions and tutorials;
Experiment with and understand how to inspire a lasting shift from a scarcity mindset to one that trusts in our collective abundance and innate generosity;
Experiment with and understand how to foster a gift economy mindset and the development of an international network of free, local gift economy groups that welcome all people.
Launch a 15,000-member movement asking people to take a 7-day challenge to buy less, and share more.
Start a weekly, local free pop-up potluck to share garden and kitchen bounty.
Launch a collaborative community project to hide poetry and found objects in freely-given reused jars.
Develop and share a school curriculum combining citizen science on local beaches and classroom waste audits.
Experiment with plastic-free living and help build a web app to provide plastic-free options for most things in life.
Develop an innovative local lending library model that requires no building or staff
Create and share free a zero waste household guide.
Create and share a free community roadmap to zero waste to link people to accessible next-life options for their stuff.
Build a social media platform with a purpose.
Set up a local Garden Share group where everyone shares their perennial plants and edibles, too.
Record and share all of these experiences through film, writing, and finished art pieces.
SOMEONE TO KNOW
Anna Ray is founder of Curiosity Learning Hub, a multi-age, self-directed learning community located in Fair Grove. Anna reread her copy of Buy Nothing at the beginning of the year which renewed her commitment to reducing consumption. She’s got a new learning space on Fair Grove’s Main Street and hopes to make it a hub for both learning rooted in curiosity and community committed to sharing.