4. Go online to stay on-budget: Check out international websites like freecycle.org to find a link to giveaways in your city. Sites like these have an environmental message that promotes giving away used goods rather than dumping them in the landfills.
A modern-day version of barter can be found on the Internet. Lunenburg County Freecycle, a non-profit group, is encouraging people to recycle rather than discard. All people have to do is post a notice on its website.
“It’s good. It keeps a lot of junk out of the landfill site,” Rich Lohnes, one of the moderators told Lisa Brown of the Bridgewater Bulletin.
He said on any given day people are giving away everything from televisions and car parts to bags of leaves. Other people go onto the site looking for items such as metal detectors, tires and bathroom vanities. Other communities have similar online sites. The Lunenburg County Freecycle website can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lunenburg-freecycle.
I’m no stranger to staying with friends of friends while I’m travelling, or even with brand new acquaintances I met on the plane, but the unifying feature of the three crashspaces above is that I found them all on CouchSurfing.com. Like the spirit of Freecycle.org (“Changing the world, one gift at a time”), CS aims to “create a better world, one couch at a time.” The idea behind it is not simply about providing free places to stay; more than this, it’s hoped that deep and meaningful connections will be forged between nationalities and cultures.
Independent Online Edition > Environment
Froogles: The new challenge to rampant consumerism
They call themselves the ‘froogles’ - and they’ve pledged to go without shopping for a year. Helen Brown reports on the new anti-consumerism movement
Published: 05 October 2006
Last week Laura Cousins chose to make some soap. She had all the ingredients: the drain cleaner, essential oil and rain water. “But I didn’t have the sugar thermometers I needed, or a stainless steel pan, or a pair of rubber gloves.”
Most of us would have remedied the deficit with a quick trip to the high street. But Cousins has made a resolution to buy nothing new for 12 months. “I placed a ‘wanted’ ad on freecycle for the things I needed,” she explains as we drive through her home town, Bournemouth, “and I got the pan and the gloves. But nobody had a spare sugar thermometer. So I popped round to my neighbour Joyce’s house. She’s quite elderly and admitted that since her stroke, her jam-making days were over. But she said I could rummage through her cupboard and see what I could find. In exchange for a thermometer, I gave her some eggs from our chickens, and promised a bar of the soap. My resolution allows me to buy essentials and barter for other things I need.”
Cousins is part of the new “froogle” movement, which began in America. “Froogles” are environmentally-motivated types who use the internet to help them cut their consumerism back to basics. The trend grew out of waste-reducing internet groups like “Freecycle”, where goods are exchanged for free. Then in December 2004, New Yorker Judith Levine realised she had spent over $1,000 in the run-up to Christmas and resolved to tap the ATM for nothing but necessities for the next 12 months.
In her book about her fritter-free year, Not Buying It, Levine challenged her country’s consumer culture. “In New York, only a day after the towers fell,” she writes, “Mayor Rudolph Giuliani counselled his trembling constituents to ’show you’re not afraid. Go to restaurants. Go shopping.’ When the world’s people asked how they could help, he said, ‘Come here and spend money.’ Shopping became a patriotic duty. Buy that flat screen TV, our leaders commanded, or the terrorists have won.”
Levine questioned if freedom could really be bought at the cash register. She’d heard of the International “Buy Nothing Day”, but decided to take things 364 days further. In December 2005, a group of 50 San Franciscans made an identical pledge for 2006. Calling themselves “The Compact”, this assortment of teachers, engineers, executives and other professionals vowed “to go beyond recycling in trying to counteract the negative global environmental and socio-economic impacts of US consumer culture, to resist global corporatism, and to support local businesses, farms, etc - a step, we hope, inherits the revolutionary impulse of the Mayflower Compact; to reduce clutter and waste in our homes; to simplify our lives”.
Their resolution permitted the purchase of food, health and safety items and underwear. Other items could be acquired second hand. Nine months on the group is still hanging in there.
Inspired by the secular Lents of Levine and The Compact, Cousins decided she’d commit to her own 12 months of “froogalism”. As we sit down for coffee in her cosy suburban home, the 39-year old drum-circle facilitator explains that she inherited a strong reduce, re-use and recycle philosophy from her parents. “They grew up during the war, and were used to a degree of deprivation. Then they moved out to California in the 1950s and I was born there in the 1960s. They never threw anything away, so green issues had always been there for me.
“Then I got involved with internet forums like my local Agenda 21 group, which opened my eyes to helping local people live a more sustainable lifestyle. There was advice on car sharing, composting and solar panels. I also began contributing articles to downsizer.com and I joined up my kids’ school to the eco-schools programme.”
After reading about Levine’s adventures online, Cousins decided to give the 12-month plan a go. She is eight weeks in and enjoying herself, although she admits that people might think she is a bit of a fake because she didn’t have a real shopping habit before she started. “I did buy lots of books and CDs.But now I’m making everything myself. And we have an allotment and the chickens, of course.”
Cousins gets her clothes from charity shops and jokes that she’d have to move if her local Age Concern closed. I ask about underwear. She giggles. “I haven’t needed any new yet, though I admit I wouldn’t buy any second-hand. But my five-year-old son’s wearing second-hand pants. A friend’s son grew very quickly and she passed them on.”
Cousins’ husband, David, admits that he hasn’t gone for the project 100 per cent. He keeps tropical fish, which need new things. And Cousins herself has cheated a little already. When she needed some camomile teabags she asked her brother if he had any. He didn’t but went out and bought some for her, in exchange for a lift in her car. “That’s not really the way it’s meant to work,” she says.
“One thing I’ve really had to curb is my impulsive nature,” she muses. “Like with the soap. A few months ago I could have just gone out and bought what I needed. But I had to wait to assemble the equipment, and find the thermometer ”
Christmas is looming, too. “Luckily my kids have been trained that if they see something on TV they can’t have it. I want to stop them falling victim to advertising. They’re not deprived. Look around you!” Cousins gestures at the mountains of toys she’s picked up second-hand. The children have, so far, found the “non-consuming” project a great game. “I’ll pay for swimming lessons, trips… but I don’t want my children to become obsessed with material things.”
When I suggest that finding alternatives may take more time and effort than many people have to spare, Cousins tells me about a friend who killed six hours at the local shopping centre. “Shopping can become an addiction,” she says. “People get this endorphin rush from buying stuff. But why? Is it for the same reason people drink and take drugs? Because there’s something missing? Some human contact, perhaps?
“Although we all live piled in on top of each other these days we often don’t know our neighbours. We don’t have extended families close by to help us any more and with women having their babies later, grandparents are less likely to be around. Sustainable living is community building. By car sharing and bartering you build a ‘family’ - and you can’t buy those in a mall.”
How to be froogle
* Avoid processed food. Buy locally if possible and avoid supermarkets.
* It’s fine to buy basic toiletries. Extras, such as make-up, can be found in charity shops if you’re prepared to rummage.
* Underwear is OK.
* You can buy lightbulbs - if you’re replacing bad old bulbs with new energy- saving versions
* Pharmaceuticals and health products are allowed. But with your new cook-from-scratch lifestyle, you might ask yourself if you really need those vitamins and supplements
* Shoes - utilitarian only. The froogles point out that this is no dispensation for those Manolos.
* Everything else must be bought second-hand, shared, borrowed or bartered.
Last week Laura Cousins chose to make some soap. She had all the ingredients: the drain cleaner, essential oil and rain water. “But I didn’t have the sugar thermometers I needed, or a stainless steel pan, or a pair of rubber gloves.”
Most of us would have remedied the deficit with a quick trip to the high street. But Cousins has made a resolution to buy nothing new for 12 months. “I placed a ‘wanted’ ad on freecycle for the things I needed,” she explains as we drive through her home town, Bournemouth, “and I got the pan and the gloves. But nobody had a spare sugar thermometer. So I popped round to my neighbour Joyce’s house. She’s quite elderly and admitted that since her stroke, her jam-making days were over. But she said I could rummage through her cupboard and see what I could find. In exchange for a thermometer, I gave her some eggs from our chickens, and promised a bar of the soap. My resolution allows me to buy essentials and barter for other things I need.”
Cousins is part of the new “froogle” movement, which began in America. “Froogles” are environmentally-motivated types who use the internet to help them cut their consumerism back to basics. The trend grew out of waste-reducing internet groups like “Freecycle”, where goods are exchanged for free. Then in December 2004, New Yorker Judith Levine realised she had spent over $1,000 in the run-up to Christmas and resolved to tap the ATM for nothing but necessities for the next 12 months.
In her book about her fritter-free year, Not Buying It, Levine challenged her country’s consumer culture. “In New York, only a day after the towers fell,” she writes, “Mayor Rudolph Giuliani counselled his trembling constituents to ’show you’re not afraid. Go to restaurants. Go shopping.’ When the world’s people asked how they could help, he said, ‘Come here and spend money.’ Shopping became a patriotic duty. Buy that flat screen TV, our leaders commanded, or the terrorists have won.”
Levine questioned if freedom could really be bought at the cash register. She’d heard of the International “Buy Nothing Day”, but decided to take things 364 days further. In December 2005, a group of 50 San Franciscans made an identical pledge for 2006. Calling themselves “The Compact”, this assortment of teachers, engineers, executives and other professionals vowed “to go beyond recycling in trying to counteract the negative global environmental and socio-economic impacts of US consumer culture, to resist global corporatism, and to support local businesses, farms, etc - a step, we hope, inherits the revolutionary impulse of the Mayflower Compact; to reduce clutter and waste in our homes; to simplify our lives”.
Their resolution permitted the purchase of food, health and safety items and underwear. Other items could be acquired second hand. Nine months on the group is still hanging in there.
Inspired by the secular Lents of Levine and The Compact, Cousins decided she’d commit to her own 12 months of “froogalism”. As we sit down for coffee in her cosy suburban home, the 39-year old drum-circle facilitator explains that she inherited a strong reduce, re-use and recycle philosophy from her parents. “They grew up during the war, and were used to a degree of deprivation. Then they moved out to California in the 1950s and I was born there in the 1960s. They never threw anything away, so green issues had always been there for me.
“Then I got involved with internet forums like my local Agenda 21 group, which opened my eyes to helping local people live a more sustainable lifestyle. There was advice on car sharing, composting and solar panels. I also began contributing articles to downsizer.com and I joined up my kids’ school to the eco-schools programme.”
After reading about Levine’s adventures online, Cousins decided to give the 12-month plan a go. She is eight weeks in and enjoying herself, although she admits that people might think she is a bit of a fake because she didn’t have a real shopping habit before she started. “I did buy lots of books and CDs.But now I’m making everything myself. And we have an allotment and the chickens, of course.”
Cousins gets her clothes from charity shops and jokes that she’d have to move if her local Age Concern closed. I ask about underwear. She giggles. “I haven’t needed any new yet, though I admit I wouldn’t buy any second-hand. But my five-year-old son’s wearing second-hand pants. A friend’s son grew very quickly and she passed them on.”
Cousins’ husband, David, admits that he hasn’t gone for the project 100 per cent. He keeps tropical fish, which need new things. And Cousins herself has cheated a little already. When she needed some camomile teabags she asked her brother if he had any. He didn’t but went out and bought some for her, in exchange for a lift in her car. “That’s not really the way it’s meant to work,” she says.
“One thing I’ve really had to curb is my impulsive nature,” she muses. “Like with the soap. A few months ago I could have just gone out and bought what I needed. But I had to wait to assemble the equipment, and find the thermometer ”
Christmas is looming, too. “Luckily my kids have been trained that if they see something on TV they can’t have it. I want to stop them falling victim to advertising. They’re not deprived. Look around you!” Cousins gestures at the mountains of toys she’s picked up second-hand. The children have, so far, found the “non-consuming” project a great game. “I’ll pay for swimming lessons, trips… but I don’t want my children to become obsessed with material things.”
When I suggest that finding alternatives may take more time and effort than many people have to spare, Cousins tells me about a friend who killed six hours at the local shopping centre. “Shopping can become an addiction,” she says. “People get this endorphin rush from buying stuff. But why? Is it for the same reason people drink and take drugs? Because there’s something missing? Some human contact, perhaps?
“Although we all live piled in on top of each other these days we often don’t know our neighbours. We don’t have extended families close by to help us any more and with women having their babies later, grandparents are less likely to be around. Sustainable living is community building. By car sharing and bartering you build a ‘family’ - and you can’t buy those in a mall.”
How to be froogle
* Avoid processed food. Buy locally if possible and avoid supermarkets.
* It’s fine to buy basic toiletries. Extras, such as make-up, can be found in charity shops if you’re prepared to rummage.
* Underwear is OK.
* You can buy lightbulbs - if you’re replacing bad old bulbs with new energy- saving versions
* Pharmaceuticals and health products are allowed. But with your new cook-from-scratch lifestyle, you might ask yourself if you really need those vitamins and supplements
* Shoes - utilitarian only. The froogles point out that this is no dispensation for those Manolos.
* Everything else must be bought second-hand, shared, borrowed or bartered.
Eco-worrier: greening the windowsill - Health - Times Online
Like eBay, I’ve heard that Gum Tree is so compelling that there are addicts who can’t resist collecting peculiar items. Last time I logged on, along with sofas and computers galore, I found pet lizards and wedding consultations (posted by a jilted lover who had paid for an appointment with a wedding planner, poor blighter). This is also the territory of freecycle.org, a site devoted to exchanging stuff free of charge.
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
Montgomery Newspapers - Freecycle offers a new twist on recycling - and saving
Last Christmas, Perkasie residents Lisa Goetz and her husband agreed they could exchange gifts with one catch - the gifts had to cost nothing. She figured she’d cook him a nice dinner or something. She was still brainstorming while checking her e-mail one day and found the perfect free gift: a 15-foot fiberglass boat with a 9.9 horsepower Evinrude engine and trailer.
“Everything’s free. You can’t beat free,” said Lisa Goetz of her motto that easily applies to the Freecycle network - an online network of people who are seeking, trading, giving and receiving things at absolutely no cost to any of them. Members join a group or groups closest to them - in the Indian Valley, the Lansdale group encompasses Souderton and Telford area. But a free boat is truly a rare find. Items typically up for grabs include books, furniture, small appliances, exercise equipment, children’s clothing, baby necessities and more.
By: Emily Morris, Staff writer
COMPUTER CORNER: Get rid of your stuff, Freecycle it!
It’s getting to the end of the garage sale season. That’s too bad because I really like the 50-60 degree weather. I’m not a hot weather person so spring and fall are my favorite times of the year. I have a hard time giving up my shorts for jeans. Many of you, including my wife, had garage sales this year and have things left over that you don’t know what to do with. Well, Freecycling might be the solution. I’ve mentioned freecycling before but wanted to bring it up again as people look to clean out that garage so the vehicles can get in this winter!
By CHRIS LIVESAY
thepaper24-7.com
Click Here To Visit thepaper24-7.com and read the whole article
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