“We’ve been doing voluntary recycling here – recycling and reusing equipment – since we opened last year. We manufacture our own computers from recycled materials. If there’s a monitor that comes in that’s still useable, we freecycle it – we give it away.”
What do you do with things that you would never advertise in the classifieds of the local paper, but you just can’t bring yourself to throw out? If the guilt of adding to the world’s enormous pile of garbage bothers you, there is a solution.
It’s called “freecycling.”
There is a network of people, including folks in the south county, using the Internet to recycle and reuse their unwanted belongings. Freecyclers post items they want to get rid of. Other freecyclers read the posting and make arrangements to pick up. People also post for items they want to acquire and a deal is often made the same day.
* Reducing and reusing around their office, by furnishing it with freecycled furniture (check out Freecycle.org), recycling waste paper with Earthworm, Inc., drinking coffee from reusable mugs, commuting via public transportation, on foot, and by bike, and contributing old yogurt containers to TerraCycle & Stonyfield Farm’s Yogurt Brigade, to become pots for plants.
* Grow your own vegetables and herbs in pots or a garden. You can eat these yourself or exchange them for items such as beds and bicycles, via the Freecycle website (www.uk.freecycle.org)
Free commerce
Before hitting the mall, find out whether someone in your city is getting rid of the thing you want, says Deron Beal, 40, founder of Freecycle.org, a Web site built on the premise that “one person’s trash is another’s treasure.”
Here’s how it works: As in the “free” section of Craigslist.org, users post what they’re giving or seeking, then coordinate the details. On thousands of Freecycle message boards, the dialogue looks like this: OFFERED: Two Pez dispensers. TAKEN: Krups espresso machine. WANTED: Garden hose that works. OFFERED: Adult diapers, size small.
From stories of mass foreclosures to recent layoffs in the area, our paper has more stories of economic crisis than any of us really want to see. Of course, it’s our job to report the news as it happens, so we can’t turn a blind eye to the economy or the plight of local residents as they struggle to make ends meet.
To offset recent economic difficulties, many people have discovered or rediscovered new ways to save money.
Freecycle is an international group founded in 2003 that finds new homes for items no longer wanted by their current owners. The Internet group has more than 4,300 groups worldwide, including one in Bethesda-Chevy Chase.
And sometimes you say it makes sense not to purchase anything at all.
The very first step is always to reuse what you have or reuse what somebody else has. There’s a long tradition in this country of having yard sales and swap meets, and now with the Internet, it’s actually becoming really easy to do that. There’s something called freecycle.org. Find it online; inevitably somebody else is going to want [what you have].
You’re broke and you just moved into your new apartment. The living room, kitchen and bedroom are bare, what do you do? Well, a few years ago dumpster-diving might have been all the rage but with a culture focusing more and more on the environment, the answer is freecycling.
When Laura Gernell heard about a place where people gave away perfectly good things to strangers — no money changing hands, no questions asked — she figured it was too good to be true.
But her husband, Ronald, had lost his job as a truck driver and she was temporarily unemployed, at home in a rented, unfurnished apartment with her infant son. With nothing to lose, she joined the Freecycle Network, a Web-based community swap program, and asked whether anyone had a sofa to spare.
Click Here to Read More about West Virginia’s Freecycle Groups
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