Hastings Freecycle

What goes around comes around

Question: what do these things have in common? A walking aid, a roll-top bath, a bag of cement, a Dr Who Tardis playset, a Compaq PC, a fridge freezer, a steering wheel lock and a glass chess set?

Answer: they were all offered in the last month on Hastings Freecycle.
For nothing.

The aim of Freecycle is to circulate things that people don’t want any more so they don’t get thrown away and clog up the planet. Some Freecyclers may not be all that worried about landfill but just want to get something for free, and others want to save themselves a trip to the dump, or be sure that something they loved but really don’t need goes to a good home.

The beauty of Freecycle is that whatever your motives, it seems to work. All over the world millions of people are delivering and collecting items small and large and giving them a longer and more useful life.

It originated in May 2003 when one man in Tucson, Arizona wanted to give away a bed, but he ended up giving away a lot more by creating the Freecycle system and donating it to a planet heaving with junk.

Today there are nearly 5,000 Freecycle groups spread over 100 countries from (alphabetically) Argentina and Australia to Virgin Islands and Zambia, with individual members numbering around 7 million and growing by some 45,000 members each week. As they say in Tucson, “It empowers people on a grassroots and local level to take charge and make the world a better place. It is a cycle of giving, not charity. Everyone gives to everyone with absolutely no expectations of anything at all in return. If people weren’t basically good and giving, Freecycle would not work.”

As a result, they say that an estimated daily 700 tons of matter is being kept out of landfill, and hopefully fewer new things being manufactured at huge cost to natural resources, energy and water.

In Hastings, up to 1500 transactions are being made every month, and membership, at around 4,000, now numbers almost 10% of the town’s adult population.

How does it work? It’s very simple. You join a Yahoo group (see below) and register. (You can also access Freecycle’s website simply by typing mobile.freecycle.org into your mobile phone’s browser.) You get emails headed Offered, Wanted, Received or Taken. Your Reply goes straight to the person posting, and you make arrangements direct with them.

The person offering decides who should get the item. It’s up to them whether it’s on the basis of need, or convenience, or simply first come first served. You can opt to get emails as they come or in a periodic digest: the latter would make you less likely to “win” a sought-after item.

Apart from the usefulness of freebies and clear-outs, it’s a good feeling to get away from haggling and money. And calls for emergency help usually have people rooting out stuff to donate.

Freecyclers can be incredibly helpful and generous with their time as well as their stuff, even delivering it to your door. Others just leave it out in a bin-bag in the porch or ‘behind the third bush’. Some collectors fail to show up: one anguished message related that “I had a taker for half a bag of cat litter but after more than a month they’ve failed to collect”. Oh dear…

All things given are supposed to be for personal use, but inevitably some does go to car booties.

But that’s at least another form of recycling. And for those who want openly to offer an item for sale, engage in social interaction or get into heavy discussion on Freecycle etiquette, there’s a sub-group called Free Café. But the ordinary postings can be amusing enough, especially the truncated subject lines like “received with thanks baby”.

Look it up on www.groups.yahoo.com/group/hastings-freecycle/

Also in: Grassroots