A couple of days ago, a man with a tousled mop of hair, a paunch and a beard knocked on my door. I had never met him before, but without any questions I handed Manu — for that was his name — a perfectly functional Freeview box that the efreaks no longer needed. He smiled, thanked me and headed off into the night…
No, I said Freegle
This was my first experience of Freegling. Using Freegle is beautifully simple. If you have something you are keen to get rid of but don’t want to dump it at the tip, you pop the details on a website. Other people who live near you see it online and, if they want it, drop you an email and arrange to pick it up. I had 20 emails within two days for the Freeview box (remote control included). Alan wanted it for more channel choice during the World Cup. Kati wanted it because her’s had broken down and the kids were pestering her to watch TV during half term. Rowan definitely wanted it, although he wasn’t sure how it worked. In the end, I plumped for Manu simply because he was the first person to email me (about an hour after I posted it) — but apparently in Freegle etiquette, you can choose whoever you like to give it to.
We have an increasing problem with waste in the UK, as landfills are filling up fast. Of course, the best thing to do to help is stop buying stuff you don’t need. But before you throw away the 18th candlestick holder you got as an engagement present, think about whether some poor sucker who has not been engaged would want it. This is probably not the case with your moth-eaten underpants but with electronics, furniture or almost anything else people are desperate to save some pennies. On the IslingtonNorth list, where I am registered, people were exchanging everything from used cardboard boxes to a ‘Sputnik-style’ chandelier. All the emails I got were friendly and polite and the number of quick responses was staggering. The only rules are no freegling animals and that no money should change hands.
That's more like it
We spend a lot of time in this country worrying/moaning about/sorting recycling, which is all very well. But even more important is to reuse the stuff we do buy for as long as we can. Britain has always been very good at this — taking stuff to charity shops, obsessive car-booting, hawking it for pennies on ebay. But the sheer volume of disposable crap we buy has mushroomed as it has got cheaper. Freegle is a nice way to fight back.
Freegle was set up after a vicious bit of infighting between the US operators of the more famous Freecycle website and British members of the scheme. Apparently Brits were annoyed at the strict rules coming from the American organisers, so broke away and set up Freegle last year. There are already more than a million members offering washing machines and old DVDs across the UK in 245 different groups. So you can do something green, meet people like Manu and stick it to the Americans all at once…
