Observer-Reporter

Go recycle with freecycle

Heidi Price
Staff writer

Alice Harris, a grower from California, had some extra pond plants she couldn’t use. So she went to the Mon Valley Chapter of the Freecycle Web site and posted a note seeking takers A woman from Marianna responded, stating that she would take the pond plants and, by the way, could Harris use some goldfish?

The two women made the exchange and eventually became friends.

The Freecycle Network, an online forum where people can exchange unwanted items and request various needs, has grown exponentially in the three years since an unwanted bed sparked its inception.

“If I have something that I don’t use, I’ll put it on there. Other times I’ve asked for stuff and I have gotten it,” Harris said.

“Stuff” in freecycle language is not necessarily the stuff of garage sales.

“My barn burned down and I had a fire. I had a lot of help from people offering me different animals,” Harris explained. She also posted a request for a barn and received three offers from people to disassemble their barns and reconstruct them on her property, but all were too big.

Not long ago, she received a request from a female student who attended Ringgold High School who was looking for a dress for a Valentine’s Day dance.

“My daughter had four of them,” said Harris, and with a quick exchange of information, the girl was ready for the dance.

If the Freecycle Network seems like a sensible idea, thank Deron Beal.

A conservationist who wanted to put his MBA to good use, Beal founded Freecycle on May 1, 2003. Beal, who had just moved in with his wife, sent an e-mail to a couple dozen friends and several nonprofit groups asking if anyone could use an extra bed.

Around the same time, Beal was working for a nonprofit group that helped people find transition employment and worked with recycling. On recycling runs in Tuscon, Ariz., the group would collect “treasures” and save them in a warehouse.

“They were offering us perfectly good stuff that was not recyclable,” Beal recalled. From there, he decided to start a cause to preserve the desert landscape and promote waste reduction in landfills.

The “perfectly good stuff” went onto Listserv, and the Freecycle movement was born.

A local newspaper ran an article on the group, and membership went from 60 to 1,000 members overnight.

More than three years later, 3,806 Freecycle groups exist in 70 different countries. A company in the United Kingdom has come forward to offer translation services, and Waste Management has offered financial assistance in developing a Web site.

The Freecycle Network now relies mostly on the work of volunteers, and its one employee, Beal, who serves as executive director.

Many exchanges go unnoticed, but to Beal and others, they serve as reminders of acts of goodness. Beal cited a recent instance in which Freecycle members from his local chapter in Tuscon ralied around a man whose house had caught fire.

Freecycle also served as a valuable resource for families who were devastated by hurricanes in Florida and New Orleans.

“If we weren’t basically good and giving, Freecycle wouldn’t work,” Beal said. “There is hope for us.”

Harris moderates the Mon Valley Freecycle group, which started two years ago and now has 325 members. The Washington County group bosts 452 members, and a Waynesburg site has 320 members.

Harris said the only task of moderators is try to ensure that spammers stay off the network. In the two years that she has been involved, she always has had positive experiences.

“I’ve given away more than I have gotten,” Harris said. “My husband got a wheelbarrow.”

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina last year, a family whose home had been destroyed moved to the area temporarily. The Freecycle community supplied the family with furniture. Recently, when the family moved back to their rebuilt home in Louisiana, they relisted all the items they had been given.

Harris goes a long way back as far as recycling.

“We have always pretty much used the land to its best,” Harris said.

She first learned about the Freecycle network a few years ago from a friend who designed movie sets in Hollywood.

“He said he got a lot of different odds and ends for things they would use from Freecycle.”

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