By Brian Merchant
Brooklyn, NY, USA | Wed Feb 04 15:00:00 GMT 2009
Buying stuff is overrated. It costs money, and then you have to worry about things like keeping your stuff clean and making sure it doesn't break. Lucky for you, there are better, more environmentally sound ways to get stuff without buying it. How? Simple: mooch it.
Here are the best ways to mooch other people's stuff, and lower your ecological impact in the process.
Bookmooch is a great way to get your books without a) ever leaving your home, or b) paying for them. It's based on an intuitive point system which allows you to earn points for every book you mail away to someone. You then use those points to mooch books from everyone else.
Image courtesy of iStock.
Who cares if the product display lady narrows her eyes at you as you swing by her booth hawking frozen pigs-in-a-blanket for a third time? You could make an entire meal out of simply cruising through Costco. Of course, there are plenty more ways of taking advantage of free samples than merely pilfering supermarkets: I could fill a burlap sack with free swag simply by strolling through Manhattan's midtown in tourist season. Don't feel bad taking free stuff if offered at a street side booth or by a vendor—most of this stuff will hit the landfill if you don't take advantage.
Image courtesy of Jan Tyler/iStock.
Downloading music is green—it removes plastic CD trays and paper inserts from the purchasing equation. And with all of the music downloading sites out there, there are always offers aplenty and ways to mooch off the retailers. For instance, check out eMusic, which almost always has a free trial period where you can download between 30-50 tracks with no further obligation. Sweet deal. Lord knows I've done it. Another gem: Amazon's MP3 deals. This oft-overlooked section features free tracks, and uber-cheap albums.
Image courtesy of Paul Sakuma/AP.
Tool libraries, like the famous one in Berkley, are amazing, largely untapped resources. It's kind of amazing they're not as frequented. Tool libraries should be to the red-blooded, car lovin' man's man what the regular library is to the picked-on, Lord of the Rings readin' introverted high school kid (ie, me). They give you access to an amazing collection of tools, for free. Perhaps due to their underexposure, there's not great online resource for finding the best one near you, so Wikipedia's tool library list will have to do. Or, just Google 'tool library' and your city, and that should do the trick.
Image courtesy of Max Dimyadi/iStock.
Step 1: Walk over to your neighbor's house.
Step 2: Politely ask him/her for whatever it is that you might need.
Step 3: Use your neighbor's stuff.
Image courtesy of Leigh Schindler/iStock.
Hey, we're all for reuse, so if you're comfortable rescuing a pastry from the trash, by all means, dumpster dive away. But there are other, more sanitary, more conventional ways to get free food: like asking nicely. Example: chances are, your local coffee shop or bakery tosses excess stuff out at the end of the business day—I discovered this when my local cafe owner held up a huge bag of bagels and pastries and asked me "You want these?" since I was obnoxiously still hanging around at closing time (sometimes it pays to be that guy). I obliged, and a routine was established—I inherited tasty, slightly old baked goods every other day or so. Your local cafes and markets probably throw a bunch of still-good food out too, so let them know you'd be willing to take it off their hands.
Image courtesy of Tina Fineberg/AP.
Yes, there are tons of ways to get tons of miscellaneous stuff for free online, and yes, I included the words "big time" in the subhead because it kind of rhymes with online. The fact is, not every method of getting free stuff online is green. Sites like Totallyfreestuff.com, in addition to seeming extremely sketchy, link you to a bunch of product promotions for ungreen stuff like Wal-Mart microwave popcorn and mini Doritos samples. Much better (though occasionally also sketchy-seeming) is the 'free' link in the For Sale section on Craigslist. You can find some seriously cool stuff here, and help keep electronics and such out of the landfills. Honestly—free DVD players, Ikea full-sized beds, and A/C units were all available for free when I checked on the New York website right before writing this.
Image courtesy of Eugene Hoshiko/AP.
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