10 great ways to give things away for free

1/ The daddy of reuse websites is Freecycle, a free version of eBay where you can pass on unwanted items and giggle at the curious possessions of others. In the past year, I’ve managed to rid myself of a broken Hoover, a load of old flowerpots, some fairy lights and a dozen heavy patio slabs that were taking up a corner of the garden. Easy. I hardly had to move from the sofa. The best thing is the collector comes to you, so you can sit tight and wait for your unwanted gear to be carried out.

2/ As a personal favourite, I reckon the ‘put it on the pavement’ method also deserves a mention. It works like this. You leave unwanted belongings outside your house with a sign saying “Please take me”. Obviously if no one does, you have to haul them inside and think again, but I’m always surprised what goes.

3/ Gumtree is a huge online noticeboard which started in Australia and now has sites in more than 40 cities across the UK and Ireland - find your nearest here. With a section devoted to free stuff, you can advertise your unwanted clutter.

4/ Another Freecycle wannabe, VSkips is free and works by offering each member a virtual skip to put their unwanted belongings into. Once uploaded other members can search skips in their area. Find your local group here.

5/ It still counts as free-giving, but with swap shops, you get something back. SwapZ is a good place to start with its 75, 000 members and 50,000 listings.

6/ Another thriving swap shops is iswap - particularly popular for consumer electronics, video games and mobile phones. There was even a Blackberry going when I looked this morning. Members place an advert for the item that they want to exchange and then wait for other members to suggest what they would swap for it.

7/ Here is another swap shop, which has been going since 2006. It operates a point system, where you swap for points rather than an actual item, then you use your points to get your mits on whatever item you’d like. Although it's free to sign up and swap, you can also buy extra points.

8/ For anyone who lives in North East London or Essex, it’s worth trying Give or Take, which will advertise unwanted items and try to find them future uses. It grew out of the successful Forest Recycling Project.

9/ To donate furniture to people in need, visit the Furniture Reuse Network and contact your local branch here. If you’ve got stuff it wants, it’ll collect from your door.

10/ A music, film and games exchange website, called Swap And Play, allows you to pass on stuff you’re bored of, while getting fresh material from people in your area.

Comments

[Tracy Stokes]

And there's the good old charity shop too.

[Nigel's Eco Store]

Put it on the pavement, or Street Cycle, as I like to call it, is my personal favourite too. I have successfully recycled some unusual and rather large items this way!
Nigel

[Elley]

Oxfam have teamed up with M&S to give away a £5 voucher when you donate clothes with at least one item of old M&S clothes to Oxfam

[Eco Worrier]

Hi Elley - thanks for pointing out the M&S and Oxfam scheme. I've been a bit suspicious of it because it seems to encourage people to take their clothes to the charity shop and then immediately go out and buy new clothes, which doesn't seem very green, but i see that it's a good way of Oxfam raising pennies.

[Ginger]

Alternatively you could hold an Oxfam-inspired 'Swap It' Party, where everyone gets something for nothing. More details here: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/activists/swapit.html

[Dorkydad]

Not to be forgotten is the free section of Craigslist or for more visibility, post the item under its respective "For Sale" area and indicate the item is FREE at http://london.craigslist.co.uk/

[Alan Foo]

Hello all,

We have embarked on a 5 year target to get 100 million "ambassadors" for Mother Earth!!!

The wonderful thing about this project is that it is sustainable and very beneficial to all who particpates in terms of education and their pockets.

Our initiative is under two government grants and endorsed by the Ministry of educatoin of Malaysia and this project is currently a finalist of the Presitigious STockholm Challenge 2008 under the education category.
www.stockholmchallenge.se

We invite all those who wish to participate on getting these 100 million green ambassadors to contact us.

Actually it is so easy...just tell schools in your area to get our tools and contents for free.
The users will then be green because we are paperless and lots of trees would be saved.

Regards
Alan Foo
www.paperlesshomework.com

[Alan Foo]

Hello all,

We have embarked on a 5 year target to get 100 million "ambassadors" for Mother Earth!!!

The wonderful thing about this project is that it is sustainable and very beneficial to all who particpates in terms of education and their pockets.

Our initiative is under two government grants and endorsed by the Ministry of educatoin of Malaysia and this project is currently a finalist of the Presitigious STockholm Challenge 2008 under the education category.
www.stockholmchallenge.se

We invite all those who wish to participate on getting these 100 million green ambassadors to contact us.

Actually it is so easy...just tell schools in your area to get our tools and contents for free.
The users will then be green because we are paperless and lots of trees would be saved.

Regards
Alan Foo
www.paperlesshomework.com

[WILLIAM]

A great way to "save the earth"
1. eat your own shit...it recycles waste efficiently and saves all the energy costs and damage needed to purify the water.
2. off yourself, by burying yourself alive...that way your body goes right back to mother earth where it belongs.

[Lentil Lover]

There is always one eh? Normally with a hang up about being called William

[Eco Worrier]

Tis true, Lentil Lover. Poor chap, if only he'd been called something curiously imaginative and inspiring, like, let's say, Lentil Lover, he might have been a happier chappie.

[leo solomon]

we should all exhale a little less!

[Dos Begonias]

I love you on American Idol! You are brilliant, Carly!

[June]

What can I do with old videotapes? All home recorded, but now my recorder/player has given up the ghost, I have a box of them that I can't give away on freecycle.

[Angry African]

I have a problem with the “coolness” factor of fighting Global Warming. But my problem is that Global Warming just isn't cool enough. And neither is the “weapons” and gadgets to help me in this fight. No badge or hip gadget I can wear. Makes it difficult to know what I should do. A Prius? Not cool. Not like the FJ Cruiser. Windfarms? Cool but I can't carry it around like an iPod to show off. Those pesky CO2's are just so tiny - smaller than the diamond my wife will accept and bigger than I can afford? http://angryafrican.net/2008/04/03/global-warming-is-just-not-cool/

[Eco Worrier]

Hi June
I recently answered this in my column. Here is the link to the article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3593180.ece

Hope it help

[Linda Haywood]

I am now addicted to Freecycle. I started checking it when I first moved into my own home and got a fridge-freezer, mattresses and various other useful items when I most needed them. I now get their updates every day -people give away some brilliant stuff.

Craigslist and Gumtree are pretty good for jobs and houses but I've never used them for recycling.

My friend always took advantage of the annual Rushholme (Manc) student clear-out into the street at the end of every academic year. She picked up wardrobes, coffee tables and office chairs for nothing!

However, in terms of global warming - none of it matters really because just one coal-powered fire station would offset all the freecycling in the country. Good economics though.

[termite]

I like to call things set on the footpath for council cleanups:

"Offerings on the altar of the Scavenge Gods"

[Patricia]

I'm a bit jaded with freecycle. I love the ethos and have given away lots of good things that I could have sold but preferred to give them to someone who needed them. However the moderators of my local group seem to spend their time berating people offering goods who commit the serious crime of not combining several disparate items into one email and do nothing to detect the car booters who watch each email as it comes in so there is nothing left for the genuine users of the list (and I think these car booters are the main beneficiaries of the combined email postings rather than the majority who go for the daily digest). I've tried to raise this with them but even though my email has got through to one moderator he insists it has to go to a specific email address that mysteriously never receives my email so they won't respond.

[Christopher]

I regularly pick up things I find and with regard to food, I get my fruit free and many of my veg too from a local bin at an asian grocer. So much food is thrown away! Tomatoes, oranges, apples, pears, bananas, pineapples, mangos etc. They don't mind and even give me the seconds before they throw it in the same bin!

[Susie B]

Regarding free cycle and car-booters, I agree that I'd rather the item go to somebody in need - but for one thing how do you define that, and for another isn't it still better for somebody to use it (even if it went through a second person making profit) better than binning it? And in any case I wouldn't say the average car-booter is a millionnaire ....

[John]

There's also http://www.swapcorner.com