Do you all know about your local Freecycleâ„¢ group? Freecycleâ„¢ is a great way to save plastic, and other items, from the landfill. If you have an item that you no longer need, list it on Freecycleâ„¢. There is probably someone else out there who could use it. Need an item and don’t want to purchase a brand new one? Post a WANTED ad on Freecycleâ„¢. Maybe someone else has it for you.

Freecycle™ is actually a huge organization of groups that operate pretty independently in each city or area. Each group must follow some basic Freecycle™ rules, but then they can make their own rules regarding things like the number of Wanted postings allowed per month (some groups limit Wanted postings; others do not), whether or not pets can be exchanged, and the format of posts.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am a member of 4 different Freecycleâ„¢ groups:

Oakland: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/oaklandfreecycle/
Berkeley: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Berkeley_CA_Freecycle/
San Francisco: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SFFN/
East Bay: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreecycleEastSFBayArea/

Items I’ve received for free include plants & pots for my roof garden, a copper bowl, a ceramic painted bowl, a citrus juicer, a worm bin (which I’ve never used. Getting ready to Freecycle this one again), a pair of crutches after a running mishap, 3 power strips (avoided buying some new plastic!), 1 cookie sheet, 2 oven mitts, and 10 soap molds (Yep. Gonna make some soap some day.)

While I’ve received some great free stuff, I tend to use Freecycleâ„¢ for giving away things that I no longer need. (Many things that I never needed in the first place but impulsively bought. That’s a different problem, and I’m working on it!) Here’s a partial list of a few items I’ve found homes for through Freecycleâ„¢: plastic grocery bags, plastic plant pots, a white board, an old cell phone and charger, books, CDs, unopened packages of food, running shoes, a wine rack, some vitamins, & some paper office supplies.

Some of the giveaways were things that I listed as Offers on Freecycleâ„¢. But others were the result of scanning the Wanted ads and realizing I had things that I’d never used but that someone else was actually looking for.

So, skeptics might ask why we don’t sell these items on eBay or Craigslist and make some money from them. And yeah, that’s a good idea too. I’ve certainly sold my fair share of items that way. But Freecycleâ„¢ is for things that you really have no time or energy to try to sell… things that would end up in a landfill otherwise. And it really feels good to give somebody something they need for free. Just ask my dad; he does it all the time!

Other skeptics might worry about making contact with people you don’t know. The beauty is that if you don’t want to meet people face to face, you don’t have to. You can arrange to leave an item on your porch and have the person come and get it at a time when you’re not home. Or you can choose to meet them. You can arrange it however you want through e-mail. The one big no-no is to place a first come/first serve ad saying you’ll leave the item for whoever gets there first. That just leads to chaos and is strictly forbidden in all Freecycleâ„¢ groups.

So yay for Freecycle™. Check it out and see if there is a group in your area:  https://www.freecycle.org/browse/

ADVERTISEMENT

I only post ads for companies I patronize myself. Your support helps to fund my plastic-free mission.