Don't dump that dog-basket!

Recycling is like dieting – noble ambitions tend to be gnawed and nibbled by human nature. The ideal diet and the ideal recycling plan should be fun to follow and easy to understand. Any chance…?

Free to a good home

Freecycle scores heavily on ease of understanding. The only purpose of the website is to put you in touch with a local group who subscribe to the Freecycle ethos. So what’s the big idea?

The idea is that I advertise stuff which I can’t use any more (or never could use), and my advert is answered by someone who can use it. And to keep it simple – no long-distance correspondence, no postage and packing – the movement is organised into local groups.

Since I live in Westminster, naturally I followed the link to Westminster Freecycle. I had to have a Yahoo login, as the group is formed as a Yahoo Group. If you haven’t got a login, signing up to Yahoo is reasonably straightforward. So I was in – what did I find?

Messages are displayed last-first. There have been 190 in the last week. They consist of offers (a car seat, a single bed, some coloured pipe cleaners for children’s crafts), items wanted (a radio, a USB cable, “as many jam jars as possible”) and subsequent messages confirming that offers have been accepted and goods collected.

It’s a global idea, but it’s also a parish-pump affair – that’s its biggest strength. Of course there are risks involved – in any transaction with another person, even a free transaction, you have to take precautions. The local group’s website gives prominent warning on its home page, and this is backed up by the main Freecycle website.

Other local groups can participate, as long as they are not-for-profit. This is great because it makes it easier to find a good home for, say, curtain material which is no longer fashionable or to your taste, but can be eagerly transmogrified into exotic costumes by the kids in the local playgroup.

I rather fancied the hammock and the wind-up gramophone. I could just see myself relaxing to the scratchy strains of some old records, but they’ve both been snapped up. Pity… perhaps I’ll just go for the sandwich toaster, and while I’m at it I’ll get rid of that giant panda that’s blocking the wardrobe…

(From the Gateway to websites, select “Environment & geography”. Freecycle is under “Going green”. There is a separate link to the Westminster Freecycle group.)


Boris’s bin-liner reduction strategy

There’s just room for a quick mention of Recycle for London, the Mayor’s colourful shop window for the many official and voluntary schemes to starve our black bin-liners and redirect the waste which isn’t really waste at all.

(From the Gateway to websites, select “Environment & geography”. Recycle for London is under “Going green”.)