There’s something nostalgic about yard sales. Many people look back fondly on checking the local newspaper to find several for a Saturday morning. These sales can also be instructional, as they teach children the basics of friendly haggling.
But yard sales now have a new meaning as an eco-friendly way to reduce waste and lower your carbon footprint. Holding your own yard sale can avoid wasting items that you might otherwise throw away during a move. Shopping at yard sales can help breathe new life into one-of-a-kind finds. They bring to life the saying that “one person’s trash is another’s treasure.”
Yard sales don’t have to be individual. They can be held at the local community level or even nationally. For Weinberg senior Abby Miggiani, her Syracuse, New York, high school would host sales of its own. Community members donated items that were sorted by room, with kitchen appliances in the cafeteria, clothes and toys in the gym, and even furniture taking up the hallways.
ABBY MIGGIANI: It would pretty much take over the entire high school.
This also served as a fundraiser for clubs, which used the profits to fund field trips. She says, however, that personal yard sales have a different focus.
MIGGIANI: You don’t do it because you want to make money, you do it because you have a lot of stuff and you want to get rid of it. But, you don’t want to throw it out because that’d be pretty wasteful.
Many universities have started large-scale yard sales to reduce campus waste. Departments collect donated items from students during move-out and sell them at large mark-downs. Not every approach is the same, either. Northwestern University collects donated items during move-out season and donates them to local charities.
But there is a certain appeal to the yard sale. The University of Richmond hosts an annual “Big Yard Sale.” They partner with the local Sierra Club to put these items back in local hands.
DAVID DONALDSON: We know that it’s gonna be used locally instead of shipping. We try to reduce how much we ship off to Goodwill because Goodwill, you never know if it’s gonna stay in Virginia or if it’s gonna go to some other place.
That’s David Donaldson, the manager of Rethink Waste at the University of Richmond.
This event has become a tradition for the local community. In 2020, it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The next year, Donaldson received calls from local residents, eager to hear if the event would be back. He says the “Big Yard Sale” keeps these goods
DONALDSON: In the community, keeps it out of the landfill. It’s really what our goal is.
While Richmond’s program has united residents at the local level, there have been ongoing efforts in other cases to scale this to greater lengths. The 127 Yard Sale is an annual three-day chain of yard sales that stretches 690 miles and spans six states. It started in the 1980s as a way to encourage visitors to travel along U.S. Route 127 and visit rural communities.
The 127 Yard Sale’s Director of Media Relations, Josh Randall, notes that this event still serves to benefit those from rural communities.
JOSH RANDALL: They’ll collect stuff all year long and they’ll sell it and that can generate a big portion of their annual income.
He adds that there are constantly new and imaginative reuse methods at different yard sales along the route. From repurposing to do-it-yourself designs, these yard sales have something for everyone.
RANDALL: I don’t know how people even think of this stuff, but they’ll buy old items and they’ll repurpose them and use them in all kinds of different ways. So, it’s definitely a good way to prevent things from just going to waste and ending up in the landfill.
However, the premier place promoting a resale economy isn’t on American soil, or in the backyard of local listeners.
Australia’s Garage Sale Trail happens on two separate November weekends in 2025. In 2023, this event had over 400,000 participants across the country and helped to extend the life of over 10 million pounds worth of items. That’s enough to recreate the Statue of Liberty 22 times.
This trail included over 14,000 separate sales in 2023. The group works with over 80 local councils as well as the government of Queensland, Australia’s Northeast state, and the Environmental Protection Authority of New South Wales, a Southeast state. Participants can also register their sales online or view a map of other sales.
According to Liz Baldwin, campaign assistant and garage sale guru at Garage Sale Trail, the Australian government emphasizes this kind of circular economy. Garage Sale Trail has worked with the government to reverse environmental damage through reuse.
LIZ BALDWIN: I think Australia isn’t special in that we’ve become quite wasteful as a society. So I think it’s sort of shifting back to an equilibrium where people are actually reusing and recycling their things.
Yard sales may also benefit childhood development. Children attending these sales can practice math and reading skills. They can also enhance social skills with people from different generations.
NICOLE MCANINCH: I think the more they can see that connection to real life, the more that it makes the classroom feel very alive to them.
That’s Dr. Nicole McAninch, a Clinical Associate Professor of Child and Family Studies at Baylor University. McAninch says it’s important to teach children about past events and objects. When her son was nine, she brought him to a yard sale. He saw a space heater from decades ago, unsure of what it was. This became a teachable moment, where he learned about a relic of the past.
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In a world of online shopping, venturing out to a yard sale is less common. But with the impact of meeting new people, building local community, and finding ways to reduce your carbon footprint, they can be an easy way to be environmentally friendly at the local level. Baldwin noticed that Garage Sale Trail participants emphasized this community aspect.
BALDWIN: We do a fellow survey for feedback each year, and one of the things that they were saying in the latest one was that having a conversation and meeting your neighbors and being social was actually what they enjoyed most about the process.
People make the trek to yard sales for many different reasons: community, economy, environmentalism, and more. For McAninch, yard sales are about the journey.
MCANINCH: You’re there to find what you never knew you were looking for.
For WNUR News, I’m Gabe Shumway.
