Why did I start reuzr? A little bit of that story is in my introductory video…but to be honest that’s the story told through a marketing lens. Here’s the longer story…
Part 1
Back in the days of the pandemic, I was walking around my neighborhood and kept seeing people throwing away big, flat screen TVs and computers and big bags of clothes. I knew from experiences a few years before that it’s actually surprisingly difficult to figure out how to get rid of electronics in way that minimizes what goes into landfill. Bestbuy says they do it…but I would be SHOCKED if they really did consistently. That’s not their business and they don’t make money from it. But, nevertheless, seeing all this stuff out for trash pick up made me upset and angry, knowing that all of this was going to a landfill, where it would be piled on top of all the other garbage and sit and leach chemicals into the ground and poison the earth and the animals and people. At the same time, I was sympathetic to the people throwing the stuff away because I knew that it was A LOT of work to figure out a good alternative.
Part 2
There’s a lot in the world today that makes me upset and that I wish I could help solve: mass incarceration, income inequality, racism, industrial farming…it’s a LONG LIST. But it just struck me recently that almost all of those other things feel like rolling 500 ton boulders up a hill by myself. I have ideas for how I might be able to do something to help with some of those things, but none of them are things I can do or address directly in the amount of time I have in my life. But dealing with waste is different. It’s something that all of us deal with every single day. It happens at the level of every individual in every community everywhere…including the individuals in my own community. So I realized that I could do something that could have an impact at a scale I could handle, which would increase the chances of me making it happen at all…and sooner rather than later.
Part 3
A final kick in the ass came in the form of a quote I came across recently. “Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on Earth.” Roberto Clemente said that. I don’t know much about him as a person, but what I know makes me think he was pretty extraordinary. But regardless of the source, the quote hit me hard because that’s what this is all about: if you can do SOMETHING to help the world, you should. It’s that simple. The world is too screwed up and too much on the edge of a giant shithole for people who are willing and able to stand by and not do anything. So that’s what I’m doing. Something.
Thanks for reading!
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