A Personal Letter from Liesl: Seeing the Impact of Your Generosity

Dear Buy Nothing Community,

I want to offer a heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who has brought this movement to life and announce the next chapter in The Buy Nothing Project.

Every single day, I am moved by what I see happening here. Whether you come to Buy Nothing simply to witness the authentic expressions of gratitude that fill our feeds, or you are actively giving and asking to help our gift economy thrive. We see you. Your presence matters, and your participation is the heartbeat of this community.

Together, we’re building a new global economy rooted in trust, connection, and mutual support, as seen by the example of Rob P, whose remarkable bike repair talents have impacted his neighbors in Seattle, in an incredibly touching way. And honestly? Our Earth has never needed a system like this as much as we do right now.

One Person Can Change the World

I’ve always believed that one person has the power to change the world. It’s the foundational belief that drove us to start The Buy Nothing Project in the first place. Today, our collective movement has grown to 14 million people across more than 50 countries. Collectively, we are connecting person-to-person while keeping previously unmeasured tons of waste out of landfills.

But as massive as those numbers are, the real magic of Buy Nothing doesn't happen in the aggregates. It happens one-on-one. It happens one person, and one act of generosity, at a time.

You’ve always known that you can make a difference. Now, I want to help you see it.

Introducing Buy Nothing Pro

I am thrilled to introduce Buy Nothing Pro, a new way to experience our app that puts your personal story at the center of the movement.

With a Pro membership, you get access to a personal impact dashboard designed to show you the significance and meaning behind your Buy Nothing actions. It tracks the volume of goods you’ve kept out of landfills, the number of neighborly gives and asks you’ve fulfilled, and the real-world wealth you are actively generating in your local community through your own generosity. These aren't just the community’s collective numbers. They are also yours. And we’ve custom-built a model for calculating these metrics powered by the extraordinary engine of collaborative consumption we all know as Buy Nothing. 

To make the app work even better for your daily life, Pro also includes features like customized wish lists and more viewing radius options so you can form-fit your sharing to meet your needs.

Behind the Scenes: How We Built Your New Impact Metrics

For the past year, our data team has been hard at work turning your everyday Buy Nothing actions into real, measurable impact. We took the huge variety of items shared in our community and built a smart tracking system that can estimate the physical weight, size, and typical dollar value of almost anything given away. To make sure these numbers are reliable and accurate, we grounded our weight estimates in the exact same framework used by the Environmental Protection Agency.

All of this complex math is what powers the new Impact Dashboard you'll see in the app. Now, every time you give or receive a gift, you can see how many items you've fulfilled, an estimate of the pounds you've kept out of landfills, and how much wealth you’ve helped create in your community. On our end, these same models let us show cities, researchers, and environmental partners the massive, undeniable power of neighborhood-scale reuse. We are so proud to finally show you the incredible difference that each of us can make every single day.

Keeping Our Community Thriving, Together

The Buy Nothing Project is, and always will be, community-supported. Our basic app membership remains entirely free, just as it has always been. Pro is simply an invitation for those who want deeper insight into their personal impact and want to help us grow and sustain this movement.

Buy Nothing Pro is available as an annual subscription of $69.99, with an introductory offer for our Pro launch at $49.99 or $4.99/month, and every single dollar goes directly toward keeping this global community thriving, improving the app, and supporting our small team.

I also want to reiterate a promise that will never change: We will never sell your private data. Buy Nothing Pro is designed to give you more insight into your impact without ever compromising your privacy or your peace.

Join Me in the Next Chapter

This is what I always envisioned Buy Nothing could be: a space where you can actually watch the world change for the better through your very own efforts.

Thank you for being here, for giving from your own abundance, for asking for what you want rather than buying it online, and for believing in the power of community. I hope you'll join me in this next chapter.

With deep gratitude,

Liesl

Co-Founder, Co-Volunteer & CEO, The Buy Nothing Project