South Bend Tribune, 7/24/2005
Examining The Freecycle Network (www.freecycle.org), an Internet community where members can unload old stoves and sewing machines, broken toaster ovens and knickknacks instead of discarding them. It’s part environmental grassroots movement and part virtual garage sale.

Reuse Revolution

By Jeremy D. Bonfiglio
Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND — Laura Giles admits the house she rents near the University of Notre Dame campus is a work in progress.

Board games and clothes are stacked on two stuffed chairs. The space once occupied by a couch is cluttered with everything from dessert dishes to cassette tapes. One cat, “Lilo,” sits atop an empty litter box, another, “Stitch,” eyes an aquarium that houses two unnamed pet rats.

“I’ve already given away a lot of stuff,” Giles says, moving a stack of books from one of the chair cushions. She’s de-cluttering to make space for a new roommate. The rats will soon be getting the boot.

“They’ll be freecycled,” she says. As in “free” and “recycle.”

The Freecycle Network (www.freecycle.org) is an Internet community where members can unload old stoves and sewing machines, broken toaster ovens and knickknacks instead of discarding them.

It’s part environmental grassroots movement and part virtual garage sale, without the sale, because all items must be free — even rats.

The concept works like this: Donors list unwanted items and their e-mail address on a local Yahoo! Groups list. Visitors can browse the Web site or have postings sent to an e-mail account. If there’s something they want, they e-mail the donor and make arrangements for the exchange.

“If more people knew about it,” Giles says, ” I know more people would do it.”

So far, that’s held true.

In just two years, Freecycle has attracted more than 1.4 million members in 2,800 local groups and 50 countries. In that time, 15 Freecycle groups, stretching from Goshen to Benton Harbor, have popped up in this area.

Each local Freecycle community is run by a volunteer moderator.

“There’s a lot of generosity, a lot of people helping each other,” says Albert Lacey, owner and moderator of South Bend-Mishawaka Freecycle, which began Dec. 15, 2003. “I liked the idea of helping people without getting anything in return.”

While many area groups have fewer than 200 members, South Bend-Mishawaka Freecycle has more than 1,300, making it the largest in the region.

“Just in the past week,” Lacey says, “we’ve had 37 new members.”

A brief history

Deron Beal, who ran a small recycling program in Tucson, Ariz., started The Freecycle Network on May 1, 2003.

“In the process of the day we’d see all types of things that had been thrown away,” Beal says. “We’d just grab everything we could. But it became a lot of work to distribute to nonprofits.”

So, Beal sent an e-mail to 30-odd friends and nonprofit groups about listing unwanted and needed items online.

“I thought about calling it FreeBay, but I didn’t want to get sued,” Beal says. “I set it up as an online tool for me, but I thought if it had a catchy name it might just take off.”

Freecycle was off and running.

Trash to treasure?

The format has largely remained unchanged since Beal’s first e-mail. Members post donations as “offers” and requests as “wanted.”

While not all Freecycle items are treasures, Mary Morgan of South Bend has found a use for just about everything. Like the broken golf clubs that prop up her tomato plants. Or the green plastic lawn chairs that have blue fabric supporting the cracks.

“These chairs would’ve been in the trash,” she says. Instead, they are extra seating by Morgan’s pool.

It’s that vision, Beal says, that has helped Freecycle keep 50 tons of stuff a day out of landfills.

Morgan, who discovered Freecycle five months ago, says it not only fits into her environmentally-friendly lifestyle mdash; complete with a family compost pile and recycling bins mdash; it also enhances it.

“It seemed like a very Girl Scout thing to do,” says Morgan, the former CEO for the Girl Scouts of Singing Sands Council Inc. She’s now on “a couple minutes” every day.

A stack of cookbooks, boxes of candles and a big plastic Santa Claus are some of Morgan’s personal Freecycle finds. She’s also managed to get rid of some of her own clutter.

“None of us are that poor that we couldn’t buy some of these things,” she says, “but if it helps each other and helps the environment, why not?”

Sense of community

Perhaps the biggest surprise for Beal is how Freecycle has allowed members to connect in a way that goes beyond getting free stuff.

“If that’s all it was, it wouldn’t work,” he says. “It’s a cathartic moment when you give something to another biped out there. The thing you’re getting isn’t nearly as great as the feeling you get.”

Kath VanHof stumbled onto Freecycle six months ago after moving from Michigan to South Bend.

“I started posting things I shouldn’t have moved here in the first place,” she says.

Some of the same people who received items have helped VanHof adjust to her new surroundings. She’s now planning a party for fellow Freecycle members in August.

“It’s like that old sense of community,” VanHof says, “I’ve never experienced anything like this.”

Big Ben and Lionel

Few Freecycle members are as active as Giles.

“How often am I on?” she says. “Daily. Hourly.”

Giles has given away more than she’s taken but says she’s received a lot of gifts from fellow members.

“A patio table, a lawn mower, a shoe rack, a grill, two chairs,” Giles says, mentally scanning her house. “This is a $20 litter box. And how much is a lawn mower?”

She’s also proof that not all Freecycle finds are keepers.

Although she took two rats from a woman who had 50, her own animal menagerie has grown unmanageable.

So, with seven cats, three dogs, a rabbit and some fish already sharing the house, Giles decided the rats would again end up on the Freecycle block.

Which was just fine with 14-year-old Carrie Janiszewski in Mishawaka.

“She had been talking about getting a rat for a while,” says Julie Janiszewski, Carrie’s mother. When Julie saw Laura’s post, she sent an e-mail, “and within five minutes they were ours,” she says. “As soon as we were in the van, Carrie was taking them out and playing with them.”

Carrie has since named the rats Big Ben and Lionel.

“She carries them around on her shoulder,” Julie Janiszewski says. “They seem very happy.”

Grocery bags, Lance Bass

Rats may seem like an unusual post on a recycling site, but spend enough time perusing Freecycle and the occasional oddity pops up.

“Recently, somebody offered a perfectly good car,” Lacey says. Some of the requests are interesting, too. “Someone tried to request a helicopter once. That one stood out.”

Some of the others: plastic grocery bags. Used ice cream containers. Bee-keeping supplies. A dune buggy. A Lance Bass bobble-head doll. An unused wedding dress.

“One person even gave away a package of hamburger meat,” Giles says.

While no one gets saddled with unwanted offerings, even in the world of Freecycle there are sometimes rejects.

So where do those items go?

“If we can’t get rid of it on Freecycle,” Giles says, “then we can always take it to Goodwill.”