The definition of “freecycling” may vary from one person or organization to another. For the purposes of this blog, we define it as “free online materials exchange for environmental or resource conservation purposes including recycling, reusing, and reducing consumption, among members of local community groups run by volunteer moderators.”
This means using online Internet services as a communication venue for people to use, free of charge, to post offers of things they are giving away for free rather than throw them into the trash or sell them. Most freecycling groups also allow members to post “wanteds” asking for items. Some allow posting informational messages and/or offers/wanteds of services.
We emphasize the FREE aspect. Freecycling services, in our view, must be free to join and use, with no fees or membership dues, and must not allow posting of items for sale or requests to buy.
We also emphasize the VOLUNTEERISM aspect. Moderators of local freecycling groups are traditionally (and appropriately should be) local volunteers who live in the area served by the group they moderate.
We believe that freecycling services should not be run as anyone’s personal or corporate profit-making enterprise. Some freecycling-type websites do generate revenue, have corporate or foundation sponsors, donors, benefactors, etc. Some are bona-fide, legally registered not-for-profit charitable corporations, some raising revenue in various ways to support their missions. Others are not. Many freecycling organizations are not legally incorporated institutions, which might be better classified as clubs of volunteer-run operations, and we see nothing wrong with that. Some groups are hosted or sponsored by government agencies.
As long as they offer their service FOR FREE to members, are run by local volunteers, and don’t allow posting of buying/selling or commercial promotional messages, we regard them as freecycling organizations, but we may be critical of ones that seem to be “in it for the money” by using their web sites to make a personal or corporate profit.
The largest and most well-known freecycling organization is The Freecycle Network, Inc. (TFN) founded in 2003 by Deron Beal in Tucson, Arizona. As of this writing in March 2008, TFN claims to have over 4,000 local groups in their network (using the Yahoo! Groups online system) with over four million subscriber accounts in those groups. Many other organizations exist, as indicated in our blogroll (links). Some of them are run by anti-TFN activists who oppose corporate policies or practices of TFN. Others take no position on TFN, but offer an alternative method or style.
The most popular online communication venue for local freecycling groups is the Yahoo! Groups system, but some services use other Internet means, including customized software, bulletin board services, etc. A few examples of these are FreeMesa.org, 2Good2Toss.com, and Reuses.com
