Cool People: Freecycle
September 20, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Freecycle
The Freecycle Network is a cult phenomenon of truly global proportions. Its mission? To change the world one gift at a time. In the latest Cool People interview, Global Cool caught up with Deron Beal, Executive Director of the Freecycle Network, to find out more.

Freecycle is a grassroots movement of networks with 3.8 million members across the globe. The non-profit organisation is made up of locally-administered groups giving away anything and everything for free in their local community, saving the enormous amount of energy needed to make new things and keeping perfectly useful stuff out of landfill.

“It started with a single email offering a bed sent out to 30-40 friends and a handful of nonprofits in Tucson,” says Deron over email. “This grassroots vision of gifting as a practical means of simply not throwing good stuff away has remained at our core. What has grown up around this core is a greater sense of local community in each city where there is a group. Whether it’s not having to haul an item to the landfill, the environmental gratification, helping someone else in the local community, or just clearing out the shed easily, the real reason behind why Freecycle works is because giving stuff to others is just plain good fun.”

With nearly four million members and over 4,000 groups operating in over 75 countries, Freecycle’s growth over the last four years has surprised even its most ardent supporters.

“We basically grew from about 80 members to about 800 members overnight in Tucson,” he explains. “I thought the group could not possibly function at that large size with a good 50 emails a day! Not only did it function, it kept growing like crazy. When we saw that this worked at larger sizes we realised we were on to something big. We then set up freecycle.org instructing other communities as to how to join The Freecycle Network. We have been flabbergasted by the growth ever since.”

Freecycle is, in Deron’s words, “globally local”. Membership is free and each network has a main volunteer group, where local moderators get together to discuss issues and talk shop. As a network of self-regulating groups operating all over the world, Freecycle is all about relinquishing ownership and empowering each local member to operate in a free cycle of giving. And, as Deron points out, “it seems to work”.

“We’ve got enough junk in the world, we just need to get all that stuff back out into circulation,” he explains. “It’s totally free, totally local and totally nonprofit.”

The lack of cash flow throws up obvious difficulties when paying for Freecycle’s operations – including servers and coding for the website. But while Freecycle accepts donations, the organisation’s future is dependent on people spreading the word.

“People need to know that reuse is critical to our survival on this planet,” says Deron. “It’s the biggest single thing we can do to reduce our carbon footprint. Here’s the beautiful little secret, though: give away one ratty old sofa and you are not just keeping a one hundred pound sofa out of the landfill but you are also eliminating the use of twenty times that in raw materials to make a new sofa! This is the heavenly beauty that is reuse. Learn it, live it, love it!”

Freecycle gives the consumer an opportunity to make a difference by giving away something they’d otherwise throw away. And it’s this focus on the individual and grassroots that Deron believes can be the beginning of large-scale change.

“Our motto is ‘changing the world one gift at a time’,” he explains. “As a result, we are keeping over 300 tons a day out of landfills and incinerators. That’s four times the height of Mt. Everest when stacked in garbage trucks in the past year alone. If you empower individuals to make a direct difference in their own community and in their own way, they will. What results is a global gift economy – pretty inspiring stuff.”

Freecycle are not environmentalists in the traditional sense, but the mantra of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ still applies – with a twist, of course.

“The Three Rs, if applied with the three letters ‘TLC’, can really rock the world,” says Deron. “I personally feel that if each of us listens to our heart and puts our voice out there for positive change in the many small acts of daily life, then we can realise such changes as a larger community. Freecycle makes one of those positive acts – reuse – a big bunch of fun. Long live reuse, long live Planet Earth!”

For more on Freecycle, click here.