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."
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