About Freecycle for Recycling Old Clothes

Next time you search for “recycled old clothes near me,” check out Freecycle instead.

With grassroots groups scattered all around the world, Freecycle makes it easy to turn trash into treasure—either for straight reuse or to be upcycled into something totally new and unique. 

It’s free to post anything and local members will get notified of your listing. Sharing a picture helps, too. 

https://www.sustainablejungle.com/sustainable-fashion/recycle-old-clothes/

Meet, swap

In its basic form, the sharing economy is focused on local swap, rental and gifting of assets such as space, tools, and other goods. Citizens advertise their need for an item or the items they have to spare, and rather than buying new which would create more waste, they share the items for some specified period of time. Such activities have been leveraging the internet since it was established, and today specialized platforms like Freecycle or Facebook Neighborhoods make it easier than ever. And governments stand poised to supercharge this process through facilitation and incentivization programs that make it easier and more advantageous to share.

A boom during the pandemic

Groups that promote gift-giving and exchanging goods and services for free have been around for some time. The Freecycle Network was founded in 2003 by Deron Beal to recycle items and Buy Nothing was started by Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller in 2013 as a social experiment on a local gift economy and to cut down on plastic use.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/31/groups-like-buy-nothing-and-freecycle-bolster-budgets-and-community.html

Most of you reading here have heard of FreeCycle.org. It is a nonprofit movement where you can get rid of items you no longer need by giving them away for free or request items that you need. There is another interesting site that is currently in its pre-stage that looks quite promising. It is attempting to address some of the major problems people have with FreeCycle.