Freecycle Network Paying it Forward
Do you have a garage full of old junk to get rid of? Knick knacks gathering dust? Closets full of clothes that no longer fit, toys that your kids won’t play with, old board games? Are there leftover bricks, tiles, wood, or other remnants of a home improvement project?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have to check out Freecycle!
The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,237 groups with 4,429,000 members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills.
Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box or by clicking on Browse Groups. There are several groups already operating in San Diego county.
Once you’re a member, you can post messages listing things you want to give away, as well as messages asking for things you want. If you plan to use Freecycle to request items (by posting a Wanted ad), they simply ask that you first support the spirit of Freecycle and Offer an item first (by posting an Offered ad). After that, they ask that you self-monitor your postings to balance your request posts with offered posts. In other words, give away at least as much as you get.
Freecycle – This is an idea whose time has come.
4 Comments
You can see your local freecycle groups on a map at finder.overcycle.com
Excellent! Their zipcode search it MUCH better than having to scour the lists for city names. Thanks so much, Will!
You know that there are alternatives to Freecycle which do a much better job of organising the items, provide photos and maps and don’t restrict your trade by putting you in a particular group.
The best of these alternatives that I have seen is scoodi.com.
Thanks, Richard. Unfortunately scoodi.com doesn’t seem to have anything in the San Diego area, and most of their ads are for goods that are for sale, rather than free. Do you have any similar sites that you like?