guelphmercury.com | INSIDER | Garbage into gifts

Garbage into gifts

Unwanted stuff found, offered by city residents on website

THANA DHARMARAJAH

GUELPH (Sep 28, 2006)

The fire escape ladder was just collecting dust in Tara Treanor’s closet, but when she offered it up on Freecycle Guelph, she realized it was a must-have for a woman who’d escaped a house fire as a child.

“It’s a gift to the giver as much as it is to the receiver,” said the 36-year-old Guelph resident. “For the small amount of Canadian money that I would get, the satisfaction is greater in giving it away.”

Treanor has recently posted on the website vegetarian cookbooks, a stainless steel sink and about 36 wine bottles, which she’s unable to recycle in the city while municipal glass recycling is on hold.

The Freecycle Network, a non-profit organization, came to Guelph two years ago thanks to people interested in keeping items out of landfill sites. It has 978 members who offer up and request items free-of-charge such as cribs, televisions, appliances and children’s toys.

“If I put (the wine bottles) out in the blue box, they’re going to the landfill,” Treanor said. “So I can either store them in my basement or somebody could make use of it and it won’t cost them a penny.”

She said the bottles could be of use to someone who makes their own wine. “Even though something is not valuable to you, it might be useful to somebody else,” Treanor said. “We have so much stuff and we don’t really need so much stuff and it’s great to share it with someone.”

Treanor has even been able to score a free trampoline and a child’s bike for her seven-year-old son.

The website moderator, Shannon Dodge, said the Freecycle Network originally began in 2003 in Tucson, Ariz., to help save desert landscape from being taken over by landfills.

At last count, there were 3,804 Freecycle communities in Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany, England, China and Egypt.

Ann Garniss, 30, another avid Guelph poster, was able to find a second home for a patio umbrella, a speaker and glass lamps. Even items lying around the house that can’t be used for their initial purpose can be reused, she said.

“If your coffeemaker is broken, but you still have the carafe, then you can use it as a vase,” Garniss said. “Just because part of what it came with isn’t working, it doesn’t mean the entire thing is garbage.”

When Guelphite Jonah Wainberg wanted to get rid of a picture frame, travel coffee mugs and old clothes, she didn’t need to hold a garage sale. Within seconds, she can have an interested buyer online. “I don’t have to (have) a whole bunch of stuff and set it aside for someone to give me 50 cents for,” she said.

The Freecycle Guelph website is at ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/FreecycleGuelph.

tdharmarajah@guelphmercury.com