Reuse Your Junk

The garage is where products go to collect dust. You don’t plan on using them, but you store them in a corner of the garage just in case. Sporting goods, books, old electronics? All these items can be reused by someone else so less new products are made.

They don’t call it a garage sale for nothing. If you moved all your junk from the garage out to the driveway for a sale, you may be surprised what gets sold. There’s also sites like Craigslist and Freecycle to help you out, as well as second-hand stores to get a tax write-off.

Click here to read the blog in full

James Hall is amazed at all the goodies on offer as he joins anti-consumerist activists in ‘dumpster diving’

Sleep is cheap for Dave Hamilton. That’s because the Bristolian paid almost nothing for his king-sized wooden bed. Mr Hamilton salvaged the bed frame from a skip.

The mattress came from Freecycle.org, a free online exchange site. All he paid for were the screws to put it together. “The entire bed cost me less than £3,” he boasts

Click here to read in full

A concerned St Leonards woman is urging local people to do their bit for the environment by recycling unwanted household goods.
Jo Monks is a member of online community Hastings Freecycle - one of many which has sprung up across the country and people become more aware of their impact on the environment.

The basic idea behind the group is that anyone who has an old piece o

f furniture, unwanted toys and clothes or even odds and ends can offer them to other members.

Click here to read in full

SR Recycling, the electronic, electrical and metal waste recycling
service that claims to recycle over 99% of all waste it collects
delivered its very first “Green Box” to the UK Steel Enterprise owned
Innovation Centre in Sheffield – collecting half a ton of waste in the
process!

Barnsley based SR Recycling is building strong links with business
centres and managed workspaces. It can then simultaneously assist as
many businesses as possible by removing their waste materials in regular
collections. In most cases this is done absolutely free of charge.

SR Recycling Managing Director, Simon Robinson says their Green Boxes
are the perfect solution where businesses are clustered together.

“Smaller businesses produce smaller amounts of waste on a regular basis,
which makes collecting it uneconomic and environmentally unsound. Our
Green Boxes mean a number of businesses in one place can easily dispose
of their waste; it’s a simple and effective idea that we believe will
work in business centres and managed workspaces,” said Simon Robinson.

It was only when SR Recycling dropped off the Green Box at The
Innovation Centre that UK Steel Enterprise realised that it had over
half a ton of waste material which could be collected immediately. Once
the waste was loaded, the Green Box was put in place, ready to use by
tenants. It will be collected and exchanged on a regular basis each time
it is full.

Innovation Centre Manager Allan Wood is convinced that SR Recycling’s
Green Box will be a big hit with the Centre’s tenants. “We have a strong
recycling ethic at The Innovation Centre, which is a key factor in
attracting businesses. This new facility will be of great benefit to our
tenants, complementing our existing recycling initiatives, helping to
set the benchmark as a forward thinking managed workspace,” said Allan
Wood

The Innovation Centre is home to 28 different companies employing over
140 people in a wide range of business activities and currently has
space for new tenants. It is also the regional base of UK Steel
Enterprise, which supports innovation and growth by providing finance to
businesses in former steel industry areas.

Now she has furnished one of her three daughters’ rooms through freecycle.org, a Web site where people give and receive things for free. She loves the laptop, but says her favorite Free­cycle memory is the time she gave a Little Tykes Cozy Cottage toddler bed to a woman raising her grandchild.

Click here to read in full

Almost perfectly tailored for the current belt-tightening economic climate and the drive towards greener lifestyles , Freemeets, which started in 2005, is effectively an opportunity to benefit – for free – from another person’s cast-offs. It was founded by Christina Salvi, director of the New York City branch of Freecycle.org, an online messageboard where people can post, item by item, things that they no longer want .

Word on Freemeets spreads via social networking sites. In New York alone, its original community now has some 30,000 members.

Click here to read in full

Q: The person wanting to give the car away might also want to consider going through the Fayetteville-Fort Bragg freecycle program. — M.V., Fayetteville

A: There is indeed a large, active local group of “freecyclers.”

Freecyclers give away stuff they don’t need — or get stuff they do need — by posting notices to an online community. A key rule: Everything must be given freely. Trading isn’t allowed. Nor can there be any conditional offers.

Other rules: All giveaway items must be legal and appropriate for all ages. Verboten items include guns, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, weapons and pornography.

Freecycling aims to keep usable stuff out of landfills by connecting owners who don’t want it anymore with other people who do.

Click here to read in full

Yes, from an environmental perspective, the first two R’s in the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rot (compost) mantra are about consuming less. But if you really need something, and you can’t fix it, mend it or find it via Freecycle (www.freecycle.org), shopping locally beats getting in your car and driving for miles, spewing emissions en route to some impersonal mall somewhere.

Click here to read in full

Do Nepal ao México, da Finlândia às Ilhas Maldivas, mais de 4 milhões de pessoas fazem parte do Freecycle Network, uma rede mundial que visa estimular a chamada economia de doação.

Estale aqui para ler dentro o artigo completamente
Click here to read article in full

Q. I’m calling about the front page story on May 17 and 18 about “Residents save money, go green: The Freecycling craze sweeps into Newton.” I have contacted them by Internet several times, and there is no response to this. Is this Newton Freecycle not in effect anymore?

A. I went online to www.freecycle.org, searched for Newton, selected Newton, Kan., as the location out of the choices offered, and signed up. All went well, and it shows 15 messages in the last seven days, so it appears to be up and running. WANTED: Wedding stuff. OFFERING: Free answers.

Click here to read in full