Althea is giving away five bantam roosters but would like some lemons to make jam. Patricia is off-loading an electric organ and will send photos so you don’t make a “bad buy”, even though it’s free. And Karen is getting rid of an old washing machine that doesn’t work but would be “great for spare parts”.

Welcome to Freecycle, which is being hailed as the new “eBay with a conscience”.

Based on the premise that one person’s trash is another’s treasure, it is the brainchild of Deron Beal, a 38-year-old charity worker.

“You could say I was a professional junk collector,” Mr Beal explains. “I was working for a recycling organisation and I’d hang around dumpsters saving usable items and delivering them to non-profits who could use them. But it got to the point where I was spending all my time driving around to charities and no time saving things from the dumpster. One thing led to another and that’s how Freecycle started. I thought if I gave it a nifty name, it might just take off.”

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