Buy Nothing Group In North Waco Proves Boon To Parents, Crafters, Neighbors In Need – Waco Tribune-Herald

Members of a North Waco Facebook group are getting ready for the holidays by avoiding stores and turning instead to their neighbors, giving away what they cannot use and picking up what they can, all at no charge.

It is nothing new to the members of Buy Nothing North Waco, where people are busy giving away and requesting Christmas decorations, including trees their families have outgrown. Since 2016, the page has provided a place where people can find the spare marbles, empty egg cartons or mason jars they may need, alongside free furniture, clothing for children and groceries that need a new home.

The first Buy Nothing groups launched in the Pacific Northwest in 2013. Today there are about 6,800 Buy Nothing groups active in 44 countries, according to BuyNothingProject.org, all working toward the goal of buying less, generating less waste and supporting one’s neighbors.

The Waco page’s administrator, Ellie Triplett, said the Buy Nothing name represents more of an aspiration than a real possibility for most families. Even the introduction on the Buy Nothing Project site acknowledges what is perhaps an overstatement in the name. It starts, “Buy less and share more.”

Triplett said she learned about the larger Buy Nothing movement from a friend living in Washington who used her local page to find items for her newborn.

Triplett said the idea appealed to her desire for community, which has been at odds with her introverted nature her entire life.

“I’m not particularly a joiner, I don’t like to lead things, so it took me a really long time,” she said.

After a few months of hoping a local group would spring up, she visited the Buy Nothing website, went through administrator training and launched the site in May 2016, just two days before the birth of her twins.

One of the main tenets is that participants are supposed to donate their excess belongings or know-how. She said Buy Nothing is not as convenient as shopping for new things, but it is less wasteful overall.

“If somebody out there has that need, they’re able to be connected with you and it should all work seamlessly,” Triplett said. “Obviously it doesn’t all the time. It’s not perfect, but that’s the ideology behind it, that we can take care of each other.”

She said parents are some of the page’s biggest users. Kids outgrow clothes, toys and shoes quickly enough that parents can give them away and size up relatively quickly with someone else’s secondhand clothes.

“But really it’s anything from paving stones or tree clippings to pecans from somebody’s backyard or persimmons from someone’s tree,” Triplett said.

Shannon Young is among the parents who have used the group to find new winter jackets and clothes for her kids, wooden pallets to build fences out of and used coffee and tea pods to use as seed-starter trays for new plants. When her couponing mother moved from Texas to Pennsylvania and left behind a huge collection of shampoo and conditioner bought on sale, Young had no trouble finding takers on the Buy Nothing page.

“It’s just a great tool,” Young said. “If you need to declutter, hey, here’s a group of people you can offer your stuff to.”

She said the group is useful, but she never could have predicted it would become a lifeline for people during the winter storm last February. When stores were closed, parents turned to their neighbors for things like baby food and diapers.

“I think it’s a great way to reach out and help each other,” Young said. “Especially during Snowvid, it really showed. It’s great.”

Triplett said as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic raged on, the group has grown from about 400 people to more than 800, and every day she turns away more requests to join from people who live outside of the group’s boundaries.

“People are at home and people are in need, so I think those two things go together to make it a good time for this,” Triplett said.

In other cases, people ask for rides to doctor appointments or ask for food. She said sometimes those asks are not what Buy Nothing was made for, but she has been able to direct people to local resources for help or stepped in herself.

“It was outside of my comfort zone for sure, but in those instances I’ve ended up with friends,” Triplett said.

She said it is also common for people who just moved to Waco and do not have a support system to come to the group for necessities like mattresses and shoes for their children.

“That all feels really overwhelming if you don’t have access to it, and then you step into this group and there are 800 people that can give a little, and that makes a difference,” she said.

Triplett said there are rarely issues between neighbors on the page, but every exchange planned in the Buy Nothing group is undertaken at participants’ own risk.

She said administrating the Facebook group takes more time and energy than one might expect, and she is excited for the transition to the new Buy Nothing app, which launched earlier this month. Instead of the boundaries the North Waco group arbitrarily drew, the app lets users search by location.

“I think anybody who’s ever tried to live in a community knows that you are choosing the harder way because you think it’s the better way,” Triplett said.