Nottingham, UK — A great deal of what people throw out as unnecessary—either due to age or minor damage—ultimately ends up in a landfill and contributes to environmental harm. Trashless, a community-driven platform, is working to change that by connecting people who want to give away unwanted items with those looking for free goods, helping keep reusable items out of landfills.
The problem of landfill waste is a critical one in the UK due to environmental and community concerns. These trash sites are often the final destination for non-recyclable household and commercial rubbish, and almost 70% of that non-recyclable waste ends up in landfills in the UK, while the rest gets repurposed or reused.
They also have their capacity limits, and of approximately 500 landfills still operational in the UK, many are nearing their capacity. Once they’re up, landfills are covered, compacted, and used for construction.
During operation, landfills emit a massive amount of methane and other greenhouse gasses, and in 2020 alone, UK landfills emitted approximately 13 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. This doesn’t happen once the landfill is covered, but there are other environmental concerns tied to underground waterways and chemicals that could leach deeper into the ground, raising environmental and community health concerns.
Even then, the population still has to dispose of its waste, and once a landfill ceases to operate, a new landfill has to open, which is also challenging due to the aforementioned environmental and community concerns. This is why people should strive to reduce the waste sent to landfills.
“The potential environmental benefits of reusing items are massive,” says Simon, spokesperson for Trashless. “By diverting even 5% more waste, we can keep hundreds of thousands of tonnes of usable items out of landfills annually.”
This further highlights the need for more freecycling, a nonprofit movement that’s aimed at reducing waste by helping people give away items they no longer need to others in their local community for free. The main idea behind recycling is to keep good, still useful stuff out of landfills, thus promoting sustainability.
The team at Trashless works tirelessly to keep functional stuff out of landfills by curating a diverse selection of free items, including sofas, tables, chairs, and many other items. Electronics, for example, are the fastest growing waste on the planet, and while many companies do recycle, the amount of still functional but obsolete products still reaches their final destination—the landfill.
Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be that way. With the rise of interest in retro tech that has been taking place in recent years, people can now also gift away their old CRT monitors, walkman’s, laptops, tablets, etc., and prevent those still working items from going to waste completely—particularly products with non-user-replaceable batteries, which have a massive impact on the environment.
Apart from furniture and electronics, freecycling also involves donating clothes, and with fast fashion also being one of the biggest pollutants, people can prevent more clothing from reaching landfills while also helping someone dress nicely. Even if the clothes aren’t wearable anymore, there’s always a mechanic or an artisan who can make use of old clothes as cleaning rags.
For those interested in freecycling, Trashless makes the process easy by listing the available items on their website, thus streamlining the exchange for givers and recipients alike. Gifting to people is always better than tossing something into a landfill.
###
For more information about Trashless, contact the company here:
Trashless
Simon
07721423491
info@trashless.co.uk
Cranford Gardens, West Bridgford, Nottingham NG2 7SE, UK
