[Futurework] a new spin on the Free Market

[Karen Watters Cole]

This is the second time I’ve seen this, and just now “got it” and wanted to pass this idea along: Another example of the web as a new evolutionary tool of communication, connectivity and enterprise.   According to the main website, http://www.freecycle.org, there are ten cities in the US with freecycle listservs.  – KWC     'Freecycling' devotees are saving the world, one item at a time by Margie Boule in the Oregonian, Sunday 10/19/03 If I wrote the headline for this column -- and I don't -- I would have spread this across the top of the page today: READ THIS COLUMN! GET FREE STUFF!   Not only could you get free stuff, you also could reform your inner pack rat, help someone in need, protect the environment and perhaps even participate in a revolution.  Sound radical? Not if you take it one free thing at a time. And that's just what hundreds of Portlanders have been doing the past four weeks: giving away and getting things -- a Subaru station wagon, a bike pump, a La-Z-Boy recliner, sourdough starter, a water filter, a pet duck -- for free. Albert Kaufman, 42, was the first man in Portland to "freecycle."   Time out for a few definitions: Freecycling, says its Arizona creator, Deron Beal, is "a strange creature. It's basically a listserv for people to give and get things locally for free." A listserv is a computer program that automatically distributes e-mail to everybody who signed up on a mailing list. Freecycling works like this: You have, say, a radial arm saw sitting in your basement that you bought, thinking you'd take a carpentry class at Portland Community College and make a dining room table. Ten years later you're still eating on a card table and realize you'll never fire up that saw.  So you send an e-mail to the Portland Freecycle listserv titled: "OFFERED: RADIAL ARM SAW." Sure enough, within a day or so you get an e-mail from somebody who could really use that saw. They come pick it up, and you're free to pick a new hobby. While you're trying to decide, you might peruse the items others have posted on the Freecycle list: Do you need a small refrigerator? A queen-size mattress? An oil tank? They're all available, all free.  Or you could request specific items you're looking for. Just this week, folks put out the word they're looking for bricks, a bread machine, door gates for a puppy, and a time clock. Depending on whom you talk to, freecycling is either a handy way to clear your closets or a planet-changing economic system similar to the Native American gift-giving ceremony "potlatch."   "I see freecycle as a way not only to keep our landfills free," Albert says, "but to allow people to experience a gift-giving economy." Freecycling is spreading fast around the planet. Just last week Freecycle listservs were begun in Tokyo and Singapore.  It all started in Tucson, Ariz., in May. Deron, who's 36, runs a small nonprofit recycling organization in Tucson. Every once in a while someone would donate a desk, or computers, "and I'd have to call all these nonprofits, asking, 'Do you need a computer? We have a computer. Do you need desks?' It was a lot of work." One day it occurred to Deron: He could start a listserv, post what was available, and save himself all those phone calls. "And then I thought, why don't we open it up to everybody?"   So he did. "The first e-mail I sent to my friends and 10 or 15 nonprofits. That was on May 1. It started picking up pretty quickly." After a week he had 30 people signed up; within a month it was up to 60. Today more than 1,100 folks in Tucson trade a steady stream of offers of, and requests for, items as diverse as propane barbecues, old wrestling videos, a prickly pear cactus and a Hammond organ.  "There's someone out there who needs almost everything," Deron said by phone last week. By mid-summer in Tucson, it was clear Deron had conceived an innovative way to meet those needs. Someone sent a description of freecycle in Tucson to the Utne Reader, which put a blurb on its Web site in August and a small story in its September/October issue.  "All of a sudden we got responses from all over the place," Deron says, "from people looking for guidance, saying they wanted to do this." One of the responses was from Albert in Portland. A big supporter of recycling, Albert liked the idea of giving Oregonians a way to "freecycle" their trash, "rather than just tossing it away. I've always been a big fan of secondhand shops and swap meets. Freecycling seemed like a natural continuation of that, except everything is free. So the nature of the connection is different." For several years Albert has attended the Burning Man festival, an art festival and eclectic temporary community of 25,000 that comes together for a week every summer in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. "It's purely a gifting economy," Albert says. "The only thing you can buy there is ice and coffee." Otherwise it's a "commerce-free environment," according its Web site. "People are encouraged not to barter or buy things from each other. There's just supposed to be gifting, back and forth." Albert liked the idea of re-creating that kind of generosity back in Portland. He contacted Deron, set up a Freecycle Portland listserv, and posted the first offer himself Sept. 16: a free one-hour guitar lesson. (It was still unclaimed, as of Thursday.) "The second posting was just a few minutes later, and it was a car," Albert says. As it has in nearly every other city, Freecycling has taken off in Portland. Someone has offered to make free videos for rock bands. Someone else requested donations of large-size dresses. Albert is moderator. Actually running the listserv only takes about five minutes a day, he says. "I set a tone that's welcoming and easygoing," he says. He also keeps out spam and ensures the most important rule is scrupulously followed: Everything must be free. No bartering. No exchanges of money. In truth, Freecycle Portland almost runs itself. Albert spends more time spreading the word than he does moderating. "My intention is to grow this as large as humanly possible and to spread it to every city, state, university and community in every corner of the world," he says. When he's not promoting the list, Albert is unemployed, looking for work with a nonprofit agency. "I did software testing in the Seattle area for about five years," he says. "I don't want to do it anymore. Other things are calling me; I'm much more into nonprofit-type work." For now, Albert is happy he can provide people in the Northwest with an opportunity to give each other gifts. He thinks it could change the way people look at their possessions. Deron agrees. "People go in thinking 'want, want, want,' " Deron says. "But they come out feeling, 'I'm helping out. I'm part of something bigger here.' " "For some people, it's a way to get a free toaster," Albert says. "For others of us, it's a way to change the world." http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/margie_boule/index.ssf?/base/living/1066392205270050.xml