Luftrum Sound Design has been running a charity auction every October for the past few years. Music software and hardware developers donate all kinds of great items — the 2016 auction is when I got into Eurorack because of Mutable Instruments’ contributions, and I picked up a few Bastl modules in 2017. Things are a bit calm to start, but by Halloween the bidding is intense!
This year’s charity is the World Wildlife Federation, with donations specifically directed to protect rainforests in the Amazon and Indonesia.
The auction previously was hosted at the kvraudio.com message boards, and was kind of a nightmare for the organizer and assistants to keep track of bids and update the available items. This year it’s being hosted at RallyUp.
This is the other thing: Modern Waste is an Economic Strategy
Recycling is… kind of bullshit, unfortunately. Where it works, it’s certainly better than chucking materials into a landfill and mining more aluminum or producing more plastic from petroleum. But it often doesn’t work. Either way, it’s industry’s way of pretending disposable goods and packaging aren’t waste, while still externalizing costs and pushing the responsibility for cleanup onto cities and consumers.
In other words, yes, it’s capitalism’s fault.
All this said, recycling and this kind of waste are relatively low down the priority list where it comes to climate — food waste is about 30 times more of a problem than packaging.