A question of value - [Sunday Herald]
A question of value

Vicky Allan

IT is becoming a minor obsessive-compulsive disorder. The first thing I look at when opening my inbox are the thrice-daily digests from my friends at www.freecycle.org. There are plenty of offers of TVs, DVDs, beds, and other nominally useful items, but they are not what lure me. Rather it’s the true junk: the old glass jars, the used Jiffy bags, the old floorboards available for kindling, the bits of polystyrene, or the two tins of Barbour wax which were posted as “taken – sorry I didn’t have more to supply all interested”. What fascinates is not what you can get, but what you can get rid of . It’s the easiest way of dumping your junk, a kind of e-trashcan.

This is the sloth’s method of recycling. You don’t have to go to all the effort of preparing your cast-offs for the immaculate standards of the charity shop. You don’t even have to leave the house. Freecyclers mostly come to your home to collect. In my current (pregnant) state, I am not allowed to lift heavy objects (or, at least, I’m taking advantage of the fact that everyone seems to think I’m not). So I stand by and watch while others strain their lumbar region instead. Most Freecyclers are very obliging. They arrive at the door with their life-stories and lifting power and leave with your bags of junk, emailing days later to tell you that your old rags are now being transformed into haute couture by a fashion student daughter.

At first glance, running through the lists of “offered, taken and wanted”, the exchange site almost looks like a gift economy. People give other people stuff and they don’t seem to expect anything immediate in return – how anarchistic and free-loving. Except, of course, the gift is already there. For some of us, now seized in a kind of junk-paralysis, the relief of having it all taken away is equivalent to an unexpected visit from Father Christmas. Dear Mr Claus, What I would really like for Christmas is for you to take away the contents of my box room. Bring an extra Rudolph.

Freecycle.org does for the conscience what recycling used to do. A few years ago, it was enough to bung your junk in a few separate bins . Then that familiar mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle” became reduced to a rhetorical “recycle, recycle, recycle”. Now Scots are so good at it that there are growing recycling mountains, and some of this waste is being sent across the other side of the world for processing.

I’m not very good at reusing. I can just about manage to sew the odd button back on . But other people are astonishingly good. There are people out there who can fix a dud TV or transform a bag of old junk into a business proposition.

Of course, this freecycle love is a false intimacy. I like to call them my friends at Freecycle, but actually I don’t really know any of them, not to call them up and have a whinge or meet down the pub. It’s just that each time they arrive at my door, I feel such a ridiculous wave of love and gratitude that I don’t have to deal with this junk any more, they almost feel like my new best mates.

If I were single, I might consider this as a possible dating site, luring men with promises of 6″ bolts, cookery books and travel guides. As it is, I’ll go on just thinking of those Freecyclers as my obliging friends. OFFERED: Rubbish plus tea and chat, Edinburgh.

22 October 2006