Free & easy

IT'S HARDLY CONTROVERSIAL TO SAY THAT we live in a material world. Yet materialism has its limits – what do you do when the cupboards are packed, the loft is overflowing and the garage no longer has room for cars?

You could put an ad in the paper, or try and sell your unwanted bits and pieces on eBay. And if it turns out that no-one wants to pay good money for your second-hand goods, you could donate them to charity. Except that charity shops will no longer accept electrical items, and who is going to be interested in your half-used roll of wallpaper or the artificial Christmas tree you've outgrown?

But before you consign this junk to the wheelie bin and a landfill burial, there is another way. It's called Freecycle and has nothing to with bikes and everything to do with recycling. You send an e-mail offering your unwanted items to your local Freecycle group and if someone out there wants them they e-mail you back to arrange to take them away. No money changes hands and everybody wins – you get rid of your clutter and have the satisfaction of knowing it has gone to someone who wants it; they get something they want for free, and nothing goes into landfill. When I sat down to write this piece, I noticed that someone in my local Freecycle group had just offered "four sturdy cardboard boxes". An hour later they had been snapped up.

Freecycle began in 2003 in Tucson, Arizona, and has spread rapidly around the world. There are now more than 60,000 Freecycle members in Scotland, in 38 local groups. These range from the older and enormous (Edinburgh, started 2004, currently 14,127 members) to the newer and tiny (Oban and North Argyll, started November 2007 with just 15 members). Each group has a moderator who makes sure that everyone plays by the rules. These are simply that everything offered must be free, legal, and appropriate for all ages. A subsidiary rule is that you can't advertise yourself, your friends or your children, although that side of things is probably already covered by the "suitable for all ages" rule. You can find your nearest group by visiting www.uk.freecycle.org Membership is, of course, free.

The main problem with being a Freecycle member is that the flow of goods can become more inward than outward. In the last year my family has managed to acquire a cupboard, a bunk bed, some plastic cutlery drawers, a computer complete with colour printer, a dozen A4 ring folders, a greenhouse and half a dozen hens and a magnificent cockerel. On the getting rid of things side, we have managed to part with some unopened toiletries, some archaic computer software, a double buggy, a bottle of that stuff that stops you biting your nails together with a set of false nails, a couple of dozen Brassica seedlings that were surplus to requirements, a metre length of fake fur and the single mattress that came with the Freecycle bunk bed. If your local group is especially large or active, you might find that you become bombarded with e-mails – the Edinburgh group averages more than 100 postings a day.

However, you can avoid this nuisance by having the e-mails sent in one daily batch, or by simply scanning the postings online at your leisure.

There is, of course, the serious potential risk of having strangers come to your house to pick things up. One solution is to make exchanges at a neutral site and/or with a chaperone, but our experience over the last year has been that everyone who has come to collect something has been punctual, faultlessly polite and embarrassingly grateful.

Freecycle might have another, more subtle, drawback – how does any of this money-less exchange of goods contribute to the national GDP and the Government's tax take? Isn't consumer spending supposed to be the engine of the economy? Perhaps some of the money saved by not buying things manufactured halfway around the world instead gets spent on more local things such as food or services. There is also the more immediate danger that if you have slight hoarding tendencies your house will gradually fill up with stuff. There's an easy solution to that one, though – just post all those covetable items on Freecycle and soon your house will seem enormous again.

For more information visit www.uk.freecycle.org