Freecycle? Nah mate I don’t really do bike rides.
When my cousin asked me if I’d heard of Freecycle I genuinely thought she was talking about some charity bike ride taking place across London, she then redirected me to what heaven would look like if it was online. Freecycle is a website where people give away stuff they don’t want anymore. They just GIVE IT AWAY for FREE! Admittedly this is better if you have a car to go and pick up your goodies in, but you can hire a man with a van for as little as £20 to do this for you. Through Freecycle we all managed to find bed frames that came with brand new mattresses and a couch for our living room! See? This whole furnishing a house malarkey isn’t actually that hard. It’s also worth checking out sites like Gumtree, Preloved and Snaffleup as again people often advertise a lot of furniture for free or at a fraction of the cost they paid for.

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11. Learn something new

We know you’re already paying 9k to do this in seminars, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and learn some things outside of the classroom too. Check out Gumtree/Freecycle/the union pinboard and you’ll probably find someone for someone who needs to get rid of their instrument/craft supplies/foreign language dictionaries or similar. Once you’ve got your mitts on the kit, hit Youtube for free tutorials, and you might just get yourself a brand new skill for next to nothing.

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Christmas gifts

Christmas is the season of giving, but there are ways to take part that won’t cost you – or the earth – the earth.

If you don’t want the jumper that’s several sizes too big, someone will.

If you can’t exchange your unwanted gifts you can donate them to charity or offer them on websites such as Freecycle.

Instead of buying a gift which comes from halfway around the world, buy an experience, such as a horse riding lesson, or sponsor an animal as a charity gift.

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The increase in soil fertility that compost brings is immediately obvious. And then there is the satisfaction of seeing the volume dwindle in your rubbish bin. Different methods work for different people: rotary bins, heaps, wormeries, bokashi, collecting leaves. When I work abroad I am embarrassed by our measly efforts at composting compared to other countries, such as Japan and Germany. Recycling wisely wherever possible can also help to change your garden. Emmeline, who helps me in my garden, has made her own (good-looking) greenhouse with wood and materials from a skip and websites such as Freecycle (uk.freecycle.org.uk). When she has any excess produce, such as when her currant bushes are heaving, she rings her neighbours so they can help themselves. My halo spins slower here, but my pigs love me.

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Local authorities are fragmented in their approaches and there are few political incentives for them to work together, which makes recycling and reuse often too complex and piecemeal for people to want to engage with. People pay for waste through their taxes and yet they feel disenfranchised from (or simply disengaged with) the whole process.

There are practical solutions springing up and reasons to be positive. Local repair groups such as Restart are teaching people how to repair and reuse products, the popularity of Freecycle (the grassroots organisation that lists products people want to give away) is an example of a real desire to move away from disposal, and younger people, suffering from the brunt of the recession, seem to be more engaged with what they are throwing away.

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I have also been a member of the local Freecycle group for a wee whiley, and so far haven’t replied to anyone’s advert and taken anything unwanted in, but I have got rid of quite a lot of tatt. Erm, I mean, stuff that we own of the unwanted variety.

So far, I have managed to offload, erm, I mean, Freecycle, a plastic pink and purple bubble car, a wee girls’ bike with ‘princess’ stickers and midget stabilisers, an old office swivel chair and a coffee maker. Beauty.

I will shortly be listing a heee-yooooo-ge bundle of Happyland (when I can work out how much a shed-load of Happyland will cost to post??), and have just sold a Beyblade Metal Fusion stadium on eBay. If you have to ask, you’re not with the programme, pops.

More plastic tatt (of the variety that I am utterly convinced no-one could ever want in their entire puff and so will not be Freecycled in any shape or form), is in the trailer waiting for a lift to the tip at Gala.

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Museum Freecycle was launched in June following an open letter by Urban Salon creative director Alex Mowat published by Design Week, which called for an end to waste from temporary exhibitions.

Mowat’s proposal was for a “museum Freecycle website” connecting institutions so that at the end of an exhibition materials could be given away to other museums which might reuse them.

Freecycle executive director Deron Beal got in contact with Urban Salon via Design Week and the project got underway.

There are now 170 members across the UK including smaller museums such as the Bagpipe Museum and Bloxham Village Museum.

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The raised beds in our main growing site have been constructed from old scaffold boards while our container and planter themed gardens have been made from fruit bins, apple crates and half whisky barrels. The rest of our pots and planters have been acquired from the freecycle website – a brilliant way to offload or acquire all sorts of items for no money, and prevent them from going to landfill. We’ve even obtained quite a few loads of topsoil from freecycle too!

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How to dispose of a laptop or PC: Freecycle it

If you’re feeling generous, or you don’t think your old laptop or PC is worth much, you can give away a working computer to someone who would benefit from it. You might know someone, but if not, sign up to your local Freecycle group.

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