You sort and recycle. You shun plastic bags. Food scraps in the compost? Check.

Fantastic! Moving to zero waste also means making sure that the stuff you no longer want gets used by someone else, and that we all buy less in the first place. 2021 is a good year to resolve to re-home – to find new homes for unwanted stuff and to find ways to reduce the amount of new stuff we buy. Whether you prefer to designate a box or area where you place items you no longer want or decide to re-home items one at a time, the result is the same – giving reusable items a second life.

Here are some ideas to get your items underway:

• Done loving it? List it. Consider listing reusable items on services such as Craigslist, Nextdoor or Facebook Marketplace.
• Pass it along! Join or start a “Buy Nothing group” in your neighborhood. The platform allows neighbors to post anything they’d like to give away, lend, or share, and ask for anything they’d like to receive for free or borrow. Learn more at BuyNothingProject.org.
• Donate to charity. Donate gently used goods to support reuse outlets such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army.
• Own it together! Does everyone on your block need to own their own circular saw? Probably not. Consider joining or setting up a “virtual tool-sharing library” in your neighborhood on Nextdoor.com so that those important but rarely used tools can be put to good use all year round.
• Get your space back. No takers? For damaged or no longer usable items, Marin single-family home residents can request a free bulky waste pickup. Contact your hauler:

• • Bay Cities Refuse
  • Marin Sanitary Service
  • Mill Valley Refuse Service
  • Recology
  • Tamalpais Community Services District