Freecycle Working

How to Use Freecycle

The original ideal of Freecycle was to keep items out of landfills, but now many items that you’d never think of putting in a landfill are freecycled. Most cities now have a freecycle group. Freecycle uses the yahoogroup network to link people who want to get rid of stuff with other people who might use it.

To find a freecycle group

Go to the yahoogroups homepage, type in the word freecycle and the name of your city. The yahoogroup search should list the nearest freecycle group to the city you have named. If you don’t find one, repeat the search with the name of a big city near you. Freecycle is not just a US phenomenom, there are many freecycle groups in other countries too.

To get started

We must post an OFFER post before we post a WANTED post. In fact, the idea of freecycle is to get rid of stuff, not to get stuff, so try and make it a general rule to OFFER more than we WANT. We may find to start with our posts are moderated, but if we know the rules, soon our posts shouldn’t be moderated.

Posting

The title of our email should contain the word OFFER or WANTED in upper case, and then afterwards a brief description of what we are offering or what we want.

In the body we can give a little more detail, such as dimensions or a photograph. Sign off with our name and an approximate location, don’t put our address in the original email. WE don’t need to give the reason why we are getting rid of something, just the basic facts of what we are offering.

When someone replies

The idea of freecycle is that we choose by email one person to come and get the stuff that we no longer want. So don’t post that we have something, add our address, and say the first person to arrive gets it. That way too many people will be disappointed and gas will be wasted.

Don’t feel we have to offer our stuff to the first person who answers, wait for a few answers before choosing who we will offer it to. We don’t have to be in when they call, we can leave it outside of our front door for them to pick up and not disturb us. If we are freecycling multiple items make sure we mark them clearly with their names. If we don’t want people coming to our home , we can arrange to meet them at a mutual meeting point, but that’s more tedious than leaving them outside our door.

When we reply

When we reply to an OFFER make sure you keep our promise and pick up what we asked for. It’s very frustrating to offer something to someone and then have them not collect it. Make sure we give our name as the freecycler may be offering multiple items and want to mark our item with our name.

Taken

After an item has been taken, send another email with TAKEN at the start of the subject line and then the item description as in the original email. This should reduce the emails we get, although we ’ll still get a few people wanting something who haven’t read that it’s been taken.

Basic rules

There are some basic rules, such as, no alcohol, no drugs of any kind and no weapons. The local freecycle groups vary on other things such as food and pets. If you’re not sure if something is allowed, email the moderator or group leader.

Be honest

The most important thing when freecycling is to be honest about the condition. Don’t say something works if it doesn’t, if it’s dirty and needs cleaning before it’s useable, then say so. People will pick up broken or dirty items, but we need to tell them the condition before they use gas to drive to our house.

Can we get items to sell from freecycle ?

The simple answer is no, that’s not the point of freecycle. The idea is to stop items going in a landfill, not to give ebay sellers a source of products. However, the freecycle rules say if you ask the person freecycling if we can sell it and they agree, then we are allowed to resell it. There are some ads that say, “I know this is worth something, we can sell it if we like, I just want to get rid of it.”

In that case we are allowed to resell it. We are allowed, for instance, to make 1 working computer out of 2 freecycled broken computers and sell those. What we are not allowed to do it take something, and immediately resell it on ebay or Craigslist without improving it in any way.

Be careful

Don’t say things like, “I need to get rid of all this stuff before we go on vacation next week.” Also don’t advertise if there are children in the house, “My 6 year old daughter has just grown out of all of this.” Many people read freecycle, don’t give more information than we need to.

Freecycle Tips

Don't offer for-sale items , make off-topic chit-chat or try to make a trade.

If a non-profit responds to our offer, try to give it priority over other members.

When arranging a pick up, keep safety in mind. Remember, we don't know this person.Also we should

Be polite to members while dealing with them .

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