Making a Green Move

By: Anikka Wattnem

Moving is honestly an activity I can say that I dread. As I prepare for my 4th move in the past 2 years I can’t help but think of how to make it more economical and yet green at the same time.

Depending on where you are in the moving process you may have time to think about getting rid of local stuff. There are the typical options of Goodwill, EBay and Craigslist but I’d like to share a favorite of mine that stems from the green movement. It’s called Freecycle (www.freecycle.org) and it allows you to give away items to people in your local community. Each community has its own email listserv that allows people to communicate things they are offering and things that they want. Use common sense with regards to safety. However this can be an excellent way to shed excess belongs and potentially find new ones in your (new) community. From my experience it is a great community of people willing to help each other out with items for free. Just remember to keep your personal safety in mind when giving away or picking up items!

When you are in the actual moving process, think about the physical garbage produced by packing up your stuff.

For us, we have not bought a single packing material for our move. We’ve used laundry baskets, plastic bins and cardboard boxes we’ve saved from large purchases to pack our items. Since we have the fortune of having both our residences for several overlapping weeks we are using this time to haul stuff over to the new place, unpack it and then bring the various containers back. This saves us money and saves trees. Another option to using boxes is to use bins. There are sites on the internet where you can rent bins or you can also buy them. With either of these methods you can always pass along the containers to a family member or friend! In an ideal world I can picture organizations (maybe groups within places of worship) buying reusable bins and loaning them out either for free or a very small fee. It would save so many trees!

Unfortunately I can’t recommend one specific “green” moving company but I encourage you to be cautious and to do your research. I was disgusted to find a company that called themselves green but mentioned they’d shrink wrap your furniture. They didn’t say they’d be reusing or even recycling that shrink wrap. This serves as a reminder to look past a company’s name or even one really valuable “green” service they provide. There are many different factors to take into consideration. Questions you might ask are:

What kind of fuel do you use? What kind of gas mileage does the vehicle get? Do you offer any options to share your large moving vehicle with another perosn/family in the event my stuff does not fill the van? What kind of materials will you pack my belongings with? What will you do with the materials when I am done with them?

Making a move “green” doesn’t have to add extra cost or stress. You just have to be conscious about the decisions you are making!