BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — No Buy Opelika is a Facebook group where locals can give away items they no longer need — promoting sustainability through reducing waste.
“I wanted to do something that gives back to the community, and I didn’t like how everything was so wasteful, and I didn’t like how everything cost so much money,” said Main Admin Ariel Ryberg. “Having not had an office job, I used to work all sorts of different jobs, and I saw people throw things away. When I worked at [a retail shop in Tiger Town], with product breakage, the policy was to throw whole pieces of furniture away just because the leg broke. And I would run to the back and go get that piece of furniture and rip all four legs off and sit the little armchair on the floor in my living room, and it would look just as cool without the legs on it. They would just want to throw the whole thing away, and it just would make me sick inside to see all the waste.”
With a goal of sustainability, Ryberg said in the past, the page has also helped families in need — often helping families regroup after a house fire or other similar events.
“This page really is not designed to be a charity helping people in crisis, but we do help people in need — it’s more so to help get things out of the landfill, we’re helping mother Earth right now,” she said. “[This is a place where people can give away] the little things that you might throw away, that you can’t return — I just really like to see things being upcycled, that you couldn’t give to Goodwill or something. People do give larger items, like whole furniture sets, and then also families do get helped when they are in need, like when there’s a fire, people do come together and help.”
Ryberg said she became the main admin for No Buy Opelika after the No Buy Auburn-Opelika group split six years ago. After the split, she said she took a course from the No Buy Organization and began working to grow the account. Ryberg said in six years, the No Buy Opelika group has grown to have 6,000 members, and she works to ensure members have a pleasant experience on the page.
“It keeps me busy, planning what fun stuff I want to do — but as an admin, with accepting posts and accepting comments and stuff, it does not keep me busy at all,” she said. “I have been able to keep a tight ship. Since the very beginning, I’ve been removing comments and removing posts and being really on top of it and making sure people aren’t suggesting places to buy things and things like that.”
As the group has grown, Ryberg said she is planning her Third Annual No Buy Opelika event for community members to gather, give away their items and find items they like. Registration is required to participate in the event, which will be held on March 29.
“[At the last event] people ploped themselves down, they gave their stuff away and at the end of it, everything was gone, absolutely everything, except boxes,” she said. “I could not even believe it. I invited one food truck, but they weren’t giving stuff away for free. I told them they could come out and sell food. I had America’s Best Thrift Store coming to pick up what was left over — I was going to donate the rest — I was like, I’m sure there’s gonna be some left over — and there was nothing.”
Ryberg said she has also created another space for community members, with a focus on art, called Studio 334.
“Studio 334 is a new art hub for people, which I started, that is going to be like a sister site for Buy Nothing Opelika, and it’s for local art people in the Opelika area to share their art, and then I’ll have free art events that I’ll host because I love doing free stuff all the time,” she said. “I also hold a Do it For You Poetry hour every Wednesday. I do the poetry hour on Google Meet, and it’s a free community thing that I do where I teach people how to write poetry that I’ll be doing for the whole year — that’s something that I’m offering for 2026 for the Buy Nothing Opelika and the Studio 334, so you might want to be a member to be able to learn about stuff like that.”
For more information, join Buy Nothing Opelika and stay up-to-date through the newsletter Ryberg creates for members.
“I just created, not too long ago, a Buy Nothing Newsletter,” she said. “It’s a yearly flyer that encompasses everything that’s going on all year, and all the new stuff that I have going on.”
