On Saturday May 11, the Sustainable Moorestown Green Team will be holding its 4th Annual Moorestown Town-Wide Yard Sale. The yard sale was created to allow residents to properly dispose of things that are no longer needed in the house that may not necessarily be able to be recycled.
“The original concept for the Moorestown yard sale four years ago was to encourage residents to resell, repurpose or reuse items that they no longer wanted,” said Wolf Skacel, a member of the Sustainable Moorestown team. “Instead of letting something sit in your garage or basement and just let it collect dust, you can put some money in your pocket by selling it to someone who can reuse it or repurpose it.
“Anytime we can reduce the amount of waste in the community, it’s an environmental and economic benefit,” Skacel continued. ”But everything that has a recycle logo on it cannot be recycled.”
Residents should look at recycling as a commodity. According to Skacel, the town has a partnership with companies that buy these goods. Therefore, if they only want a certain type of recyclable, not everything can be recycled.
“There’s a big problem with recycling,” said Skacel. “I’ve seen bowling balls, a boat anchor even a sword in the recycling cans. People also throw trash in their recycling cans. Think of recycling as a commodity. Say the company only wants “number one” recyclables. Those are the recyclables with the diamond logos and the number one inside of it. That means that they don’t want any threes, fours or sevens mixed in with it. It’s important for residents to know which type of recyclables that the towns want.”
Throughout the last three years, Sustainable Moorestown has seen a change in the number of residents who participate in the yard sale. In year one, the team had no exact number on how many people actually participated in the event. However, in year two, the team decided it would be better to make the residents register so that they would know exactly how many. The registration showed that 133 residents participated in the yard sales in year two, and in year three, 80 residents participated.
“For the drop off between year two and three, I don’t think it makes sense for one family to have a yard sale every year,” said Skacel. “The event is for residents to repurpose or resell unwanted things instead of throwing them in the trash. As long as some families do, it’s a success.”
The Sustainable Moorestown team currently does not have a count on the number of people who are participating in this year’s yard sale due to ongoing registration. Residents can register at Sustainablemoorestown.org. The team will also produce a map of all participating yards prior to the event to allow residents to make plans and travel around more easily.
The Sustainable Moorestown team will also be participating at the Moorestown Day event on June 1. It will be handing out free pollinator seed mix.
