I have an item I want give away (offered on this group, but no takers) and I wish to try Freecycle.
Does anyone have experience with registering? A username is fine, but they ask for email address. Is this publicised to other members (in which case I would want a special email address) or known only to Freecycle? They seem to include a geographic area, which is is okay. How does communication take place as I don't want my (primary) email address or mobile number to be circulated widely?
There are two 'freecycle' organisations in the UK, one is the original FreeCycle and the other is called Freegle. Freegle broke away from the original FreeCycle which became very US dominated and the people running things here wanted a UK voice.
I *think* (and I'm biased here, I'm a very part-time moderator on a local group) that Freegle is quite a bit larger than FreeCycle in the UK.
Your E-Mail isn't exposed, messages to you from other people go to a special 'Freegle' E-Mail address and are then sent on to your 'real' E-Mail.
Since the idea is to reduce wasted energy you join a local group where all offers and wants should be within reasonable distance of each other. You can offer further afield to adjacent groups but usually you're asked to offer nearby first.
They don't make your contact details public. Communication is via the website.
Once you have selected a person to receive your offer, you obviously have to give that person your details so that they can collect it - but your details don't go to all and sundry.
I've used Freecycle (and Freegle) a lot, and have never had a problem.
See also gumtree.
But that in the main is buying and selling, not free with the intent to save wastage.
Scott expressed precisely :
If you are a member of Facebook, there is a 'market' where things can be advertised as free, for a price, or for offers. That goes national, maybe international, but there are also local groups too for general items and specialised groups.
The problem with Freegle/Freecycle and Facebook is that the chancers also use them to get cheap or free stuff to resell and they all have a 'granny' who would find the item useful. You only find out they are traders, when they turn up to collect in a battered old Transit van.
I hadn't realised that Freecycle was still going in the UK, I thought it was all Freegle.
I would love to like and use Freegle more, but sadly their website really annoys me. They keep bombarding me with emails even after I have turned all the settings off. They seem to want to do good work whilst also having the Facebook "let's all be friends so that we can slurp your data" model.
As a result I tend to use charity shoppes and Gumtree more - a shame, sometimes.
If this occurred, I would either use an alias email address or set a filter to divert emails to the 'Freegle' folder.
Does this really matter in the end? You could say it is enterprise. If they can divert the items for reuse rather than to landfill, the main mission is achieved. There are categories of items that the charity shops cannot take.
You can advertise an item as free.
If I'm giving things with some intrinsic value away, I would rather they went only direct to people who need and can use them, rather than have some middleman make money from the items.
Trouble is you don't know what they're doing with it - eg if they're flytipping the things they can't sell on.
I once stumbled across a fridge-laundering 'ring': gave away my faulty fridge on Freecycle, later answered a Gumtree ad to buy another and discovered it was the same people, offering 'genuine works honest' fridges out of a lockup with no power.
I have to ask the question what those people would have done with fridges they couldn't sell on. I don't think paying for a commercial recycling service would have been top of their list...
Perhaps worth listing on ebay/Facebook/Gumtree as a local collection for a nominal sum: at least some money changes hands so the buyer must want it to some degree?
Theo
In the original system your e-mail was used to communicate offers. It appears that the new system hides your e-mail address and you have to reply via the web site.
I assume that any replies are then forwarded to the user via e-mail. I am not sure if at that point your e-mail address is revealed.
Dave
My approach too. However, horses for courses. I am trying to give away a discontinued coffee machine jug and a faulty coffee machine. For the jug, it is highly unlikely that someone in the charity shop would happen to be looking for that particular jug. For the machine, a charity would not be allowed to sell items that are demonstrably unsafe.
I can see your point. Friend of mine puts the stuff on for £1. For eBay you would not want a situation where the postage costs far more than the value of item.
Where I am Freegle is pretty dead compared to freecycle. I just checked to make sure and there are two "Offers" and about ten "wanted" "local" to me where as my Freecycle group has more.
There are also exchange and re-cycle groups on Facebook, but often these also have more "wants" than "offers" (does the phrase "is any gifting grate on any one else as much as me?) If it does avoid these groups.
I also tend to give "stuff" to charity shops. Directly not via "bag on the door" merchants. The last time I checked the accounts of one such business the directors paid themselves more than they gave to charity.
Dave
Dave
Much better to find a local Facebook group. That's we we do round here and it works very well. It means that you reach a lot of people who are geographically close.
Bill
It's still possible to use E-Mail only, I do. Offers/Wants arrive in your inbox from the web site and the reply address in them is a freegle address, not the actual address of the sender.
Everything goes via the Freegle servers, so although it seems as if you are E-Mailing direct you aren't.
So addresses are of the form:-
name snipped-for-privacy@users.ilovefreegle.org>
(it's not 99999999 of course)
That's exactly what Fregle does.
Can be useful. Now, not Free* but just 2 men and a van called on a friend who had a cooker and fridge in the garden Asked if they were scrap, took the washing machine and refused the fridge as they coudn't dispose of it properly. Not pikeys - they would have taken the fridge, stripped out the metal and let out the gas. She and I have 4 items between us; if I can get rid of 1 more that'll save
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