Above: Jenna Montgomery, founding administrator for a local group of the Buy Nothing Project, with her son Skyler Toussaint. Photo by Butch Comegys.
By Ken Mammarella
The Buy Nothing Project is the world’s largest free-goods platform, enabling members to give and acquire all sorts of items and services for nothing. But it also supports something more important.
“You’re building a community with real-life neighbors,” says Jenna Montgomery, who in 2021 founded a Buy Nothing group for Greenville, Montchanin, Alapocas and northwest Wilmington after the Buy Nothing group where she’d been a member reworked its boundaries. “I had experienced the joy of buying nothing, and now I needed it back in my life. Since the Buy Nothing group, I know a majority of my neighbors and even met best friends.”
Wednesday Lampinen recently met Montgomery through Buy Nothing and says that Montgomery has become her best friend. “You start out with superficial touch points. You talk to each other. You ask for small favors. And then you really become friends,” Lampinen says. “She’s my best friend, and it’s wonderful.”
Lampinen had moved from Atlanta seven years ago but says she had not developed many strong friendships or had become “a true part of the community,” an observation that’s somewhat ironic since she has a job helping seniors build communities.
She’s been a Buy Nothing member for about a year, inspired by a neighbor giving away plants. What began with gifting a coffee maker has grown into real friendships.
The Buy Nothing Project began in 2013 on Bainbridge Island, an eco-conscious community west of Seattle. It has since grown to more than 8,000 groups, including more than 30 in Delaware, serving 14 million members, who share 2.6 million items a month, thereby keeping 162,000 tons of stuff out of landfills. Most members connect on Facebook, Montgomery said, noting that there’s also an app.
“We believe that communities are more resilient, sustainable, equitable and joyful when they have functional gift economies,” begins one page of BuyNothingProject.org. The rules for participation are both wholesome (show your humanity; build trust; give freely from your own abundance) and cautionary (keep it legal; participate at your own risk; no buying, selling or trading). People who don’t follow the rules — which run more than 10,000 words — can get kicked out.
Besides the goods and services, the project is also a platform for the “gift of self,” defined as anything “one neighbor might do for another,” and the “gift of time,” such as “jogging/walking/workout buddies, coffee/tea meetups, playdates for kids or pets.”
The greater Greenville group where Montgomery is the administrator has just over a thousand members, generating about 70 posts each week.
She said she has personally given away hundreds of items. She also regularly posts curb alerts about quality items left for trash pickup (“So many things have been rescued!”) and has asked for help (see “gift of self”) to salvage such items. She has also advanced the Buy Nothing Project by bringing items to the Northside Food & Culture Market in Wilmington’s Haynes Park, promoting it at block parties run during Open Streets Wilmington, and reaching out to the Jefferson Street Center for collaboration.
Giving is “not a free-for-all,” she says. Members might choose recipients by a random draw or what they say in the comments.
Facebook hosts several other similar groups, and Lyndsie Jones belongs to North Wilmington Gifting Galore! and her local Buy Nothing Project group. Multiple memberships allow her to find more easily what she’s looking for or find someone who wants what she has. It’s been particularly helpful with children’s clothes, she says.
Her most treasured find? “It’s silly really,” Jones says, but it was the mallet that completes the Melissa & Doug pounding bench — which she found in a box of gifted toys. “My son uses that every day.”
— To learn more or to find you local Buy Nothing group, visit BuyNothingProject.org
