Mia DiDio, of Bridgeport, who helped serve food, said she read about Tarinelli’s efforts to serve the homeless. This year, being unemployed, she had the time to finally help. She collected a bunch of coats and other donations from members of Freecycle.com and came to hand them out with her daughter, Lainy Kazmierczak. They also picked up a large quantity of donated baked goods from
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One of my favorite Web sites is Freecycle.org. Many cities, including Lexington, have chapters that make it a snap to give and receive items for free. I have received beautiful garden decorations from a woman moving to Florida and given barn boards to Wolf Run Wildlife Refuge in Nicholasville. Don’t ever think no one would want something. After all, you were the one to have it first.
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Another way to share them is through the online trading community Freecycle. The community is divided into groups for specific geographic areas. Register at www.freecycle.org.
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Ecological and economic arguments aside, Goodall’s suggestion that the UK may have reached the point of maximum resource use throws up lots of interesting questions. Most fundamentally: is it definitely true? How can we be sure that consumption won’t soar to new, even greater, highs when the global economy eventually picks up? And if we really have reached a peak, how did we get there? Was it just a matter of shifting to a more service-based economy? Can the Internet – or even decades of green campaigning – claim the credit? Or could it be that our densely packed little island is running out of space for new buildings, vehicles and bulky goods? Could eBay [an online auction and shopping website] and Freecycle [a network that diverts reusable items from landfills] be a factor, helping to keep more goods in circulation for longer? Or the fact that more of us are living in cities?
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Websites such as the hugely popular Freecycle allow people to give away/collect unwanted goods – anything from a sofa to some unwanted cans of paint – for free and there are a number of skillswap sites, such as Freeconomy, on which people offer to do things for other people in the group, from plumbing to proofreading.
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Unwanted Christmas gifts can be passed on to local charity shops or offered on the web free of charge at freecycle.org.uk.
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Behind our garage were some vegetable beds which had been well-nourished over the years, so further satisfaction came from reading on Freecycle that a young couple needed some top soil to fill in their own garden where a path used to be. They were pleased to fill the boot of their estate car several times over and I stopped grieving about building over my beloved vegetable garden
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Several years ago, I raved about how quick and satisfying it was to dispose of old and potentially dodgy electronics via the Freecycle Network, a loose affiliation of mailing-list based groups of people who exchange reusable goods for free (see “Freecycle: Disposing of Good Old Stuff,” 6 August 2007). Every so often since, I resubscribe to the Ithaca Freecycle list whenever I come across something that I’d far rather give away than throw away — a portable chair that didn’t fit either me or Tonya, an old tabletop that was taking up space in the garage, a houseplant that had outgrown our living room, and so on.
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Householders are being asked to pass on unwanted paint through Freecycle, www.freecycle.org, or let unwanted paint solidify before putting it in their household general waste, green-lidded bin or general waste skips at recycling centres.
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The cheat
Not everyone has time to devote to constructing decorations but instead of coming home with a sparkly box of Tesco’s finest, search out quirky second hand or vintage baubles on Freecycle, Ebay or Gumtree. Not only are they cheaper, they’re often prettier and will add real interest to your Christmas tree.
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