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Turn the Tradio Up

From: Rebecca Sheir
Length: 04:34

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An on-air garage sale where one person's trash is another person's treasure. Read the full description.

Tradio_small Americans send 251 million tons of trash to landfills each year. If you were to load all that trash onto garbage trucks, and then stack them, one on top of the other, they'd be as tall as 13,000 Mt. McKinleys! Granted, most of that so-called 'waste' consists of paper products, food and yard scraps, and plastics. But it also includes plain old 'stuff': the stuff that we have, decide we don't want, and, therefore, throw away. These days, there are a number of other ways we can get rid of that stuff: the classifieds section of the newspaper, Craigslist, eBay, even Freecycle, the worldwide "gifting movement" where members give away items to other members. But across the country, and in producer Rebecca Sheir's state of Alaska, there's yet another way to unload your belongings. All you need is a phone, and a radio.

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Piece Description

Americans send 251 million tons of trash to landfills each year. If you were to load all that trash onto garbage trucks, and then stack them, one on top of the other, they'd be as tall as 13,000 Mt. McKinleys! Granted, most of that so-called 'waste' consists of paper products, food and yard scraps, and plastics. But it also includes plain old 'stuff': the stuff that we have, decide we don't want, and, therefore, throw away. These days, there are a number of other ways we can get rid of that stuff: the classifieds section of the newspaper, Craigslist, eBay, even Freecycle, the worldwide "gifting movement" where members give away items to other members. But across the country, and in producer Rebecca Sheir's state of Alaska, there's yet another way to unload your belongings. All you need is a phone, and a radio.

Broadcast History

This piece originally aired on the Alaska Public Radio Network's weekly magazine-style show, "AK," on May 17, 2008.

Related Website

http://akradio.org