FreeCycle
Wednesday, September 21st, 2005
(the logo above is taken from freecycle.org, and links to that website)
I bet you have a lot of stuff at home that you bought at some point, given as a present or got a hold of it one way or another. And you just cannot be apart from just because you do not want it to go to waste, but you’d rather give it away to someone that needs it.
For the last year or so I discovered these FreeCycle Yahoo Groups which answers these questions. I love the very basic word play they did to find their name, too. These are groups all around the world that act locally for sharing your extras with the people in need of them. This all started in the beginning of May 2003, turns out. And they spread over 50 countries, thousands of local groups with over one million members!
Especially in US, which is know as a “consumer society”, this system works great, at least in the two local groups that I belong to.
It is not only good for giving away what you at hand, but asking for favors, too. Suppose you need something and either you cannot afford it or you simply do not want to spend money and using second hand sounds good to you. Then you send an email to the group and see if there is anyond that can give theirs to you.
Sometimes it is hard to believe what people want or are giving away; old clothing are just “so simple” to share but you can see emails flying around asking for air compressors, treadmills, pots and pans, flower bulbs etc. Whatever you can think, whatever you own in your houce, once day someone will ask for something similar or vice versa.
There are cases where some people are in need of a particular thing for a short time; that group can help, too. Some time ago someone asked to borrow a knife and server for a wedding. And she got it for that weekend.
If you are also interested in, you should go to their http://www.freecycle.org/website, and find a local group served by Yahoo. If they do not have it in your city, you can ask to start one your own.
Happy Freecycling!
