By Joseph Orovic
We’re all guilty of lusting after garbage sometimes.
The nice lamp. Still-working televisions. A passable couch. You’ve asked yourself, “What maniac would throw this stuff out?”
Likewise, we’ve all thrown out junk with much trepidation. No, you don’t need the eight-track player, but there’s got to be a better place for it than a pile of trash.
Enter the City’s Stuff Exchange, a plausible substitute for the hodge-podge of Craigslist. The Web site (www.nyc.gov/stuffexchange) allows residents to locate the nearest place to unload their stuff, and also buy other people’s old stuff.
“New York is a place of urban myths and one of the myths is that all of this stuff ends up in our landfills,” City Sanitation Director of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling Robert Lange said.
Instead, for years now the City has been connecting people with stores and collectors longing for their… stuff.
For entrepreneurs like Ruth D’Agostino, the Web site has provided a big bump in business.
“I get four to five calls a week because of it,” she said. “It has been a big help.”
As the owner of Wee Company, an antiques shop in Woodside, D’Agostino is expressly in the business of stuff. Too often, people mistake items around the house for useless materials.
“These things, they’re not junk. It’s all good stuff!”
Stuff Exchange has gotten her in touch with various sellers around the borough looking to unload knickknacks, collectibles and antiques around the house.
D’Agostino even went into a home and cherry picked items she would like to sell.
“They were selling their entire house. I just went in there, asked them the asking price and if it suited me, I bought it.”
Instances like D’Agostino’s are exactly what the Stuff Exchange has been created for.
The simple layout allows you to pick what you want to do (buy, donate, sell) what it is you’re looking for (cell phones, books, cd’s, etc.) and a couple of clicks away is a list of places near your zip code that’ll fit your needs.
“The problems has been connecting people to the reuse infrastructure already in the city,” Lange said. “Stuff Exchange takes care of that.”
The actual effect of the Web site is hard to numerate. The Department of Sanitation doesn’t keep track of business done as a result of the program.
Still, for small-business owners like D’Agostino, and consumers or sellers looking for an easy transaction close to home, it’s a welcome relief.