By Chris Janota, Garage Sale Rover
Typical environmental clichés:
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Hug a tree Save the planet
Give a hoot, don’t pollute.
Platitudes you hear again and again. But do they mean anything to you?
Our carbon footprint is determined by the decisions we make everyday and if you are an active garage saler, then I salute you because of the positive impact your making whether its important to you or not. Money may be your conscious qualifying reason to take up the garage sale pastime but I am suggesting that the positive effect of your actions may have subconsciously driven you to garage sale a little more enthusiastically and pushed your garage sale game up a level? I am hereby giving myself credit that it has. I’m a long time garage saler, a thrifter, a reseller, an eBay power seller… and now Garage Sale Rover developer. But I never actually self declared I was a conservationist. But when I delve into these conservation numbers this helps me comprehend the impact a little more.
Giving a garage sale item as common as a t-shirt a second life can have a surprising impact.
256 Gallons of Water = One T-shirt.
Cotton, a natural alternative and one of the most popular and versatile fibers in use, offers no solution in terms of environmental impact. To grow the cotton to make just one T-shirt requires 256 gallons of water according to the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association. The cost in water to produce the cotton for a single pair of jeans is around 957 gallons. Moreover, conventionally grown cotton is notoriously vulnerable to pests, demanding more insecticide use than any other single crop.
And that’s just one t-shirt.
