New Web Site Lets You Give Stuff Away

When Dave Grossman first moved to Manchester from New Jersey, the first thing he needed was an apartment.

The second thing he needed was some stuff to furnish it with.

Dave found a nice affordable one bedroom.

And then he found he wouldn't have to dig through rummage sales for furniture.

He discovered over 200 people in the Manchester area giving stuff away for free.

He found it on a website called freecycle.org

So on the same day Dave moved into his new place, he also picked up his first few pieces of furniture; a futon, its frame and a mattress.

Track 1 :02 dogs barking - that's cleo.

Gina and Mike Landry's dogs were a bit protective.

But the Landry's were more than happy to part with their old furniture.

Mike Landry says he didn't think the furniture was worth enough to put on e-bay, but he didn't want to throw it away.

Track 3 :43 as long as someone can use it, more like re-use, I'm not a major person of ecology... not that I'm against recycling... laughs... as long as someone can get some use out of something, that's all I care about.

Over the years, the dogs had used the futon frame as a chew toy and the mattress had become flimsy.

But it wasn't hard for Dave Grossman to overlook the flaws.

Track 4 :06 the futon is in better shape than I expected and the mattress, it's something to sleep on and it's free

And for Dave, a self-proclaimed environmentalist, freecycle.org offers more than the right price.

Track 4 7:49 I like the whole concept of freecycle because there's a lot of stuff you can't give away, this is the first time I used freecycle, but you can get rid of a quarter can of paint you have left in your garage and for someone that's not junk, it's something they need and that's the cool recycling part of it

Half empty paint cans and futons are just the beginning of stuff you might find on freecycle.org.

A recent visit to the website found a wheelchair, a dirt bike, bedsheets, clay gardening pots, a fish pond liner, a wooden baby cradle, umpire equipment, a grim reaper costume, a black fake leather jacket.

Track 2 1:48. dish sets, furniture lots of furniture, diapers, this grandma had bought diapers for her grandchild he had outgrown them and rather them dump them she put them on freecycle

That's Phyllis Brown. She's a realtor in southern New Hampshire.

Brown stumbled across freecycle.org last holiday season, when a client who was moving needed a new home for an attic full of old clothes and clothing racks.

She posted the offer.

Track 1 2:24
Within one day there was a response from a professional clown, that woman in Cambridge, MA and she wanted the clothing racks for her alter ego. I was floored, I thought wow how many times as realtors do we have refrigerators, desks, people have to get rid of stuff and the realtors move it... lots of times it's the dump.

Brown was so impressed by the experience, she volunteered to start and moderate a local freecycle group in Salem.

That means setting up a group page on Yahoo were people can post what they're looking for or what they are offering.

When they find a match, they contact the person through the group page and arrange a time and a place to meet.

The freecycle moderator also oversees the Yahoo group to ensure members are following the rules: everything's free, nothing age inappropriate, like pornography or even worse, no spam.

Since Phyllis Brown started the Salem group in January, it has grown to 237 members, the largest in the state.

Five other groups around New Hampshire are also growing.

Moderator Phyllis Brown:

1:19 we are just riding the wave, it's happening nationally and internationally, so we've got a local group, it's working people are having good experiences so it'll continue to grow

The freecycle phenomenon began with a man named Deron Beal, an ambitious recycler in Tucson, Arizona.

Working for a nonprofit that helps businesses recycle, Beal was coming across a lot of perfectly good stuff.

He was spending so much time tracking down people who needed it, Beal turned to the web.

3:49 and I thought if I'm going to start up a list serve if I gave it a nifty name and opened it up to everyone, it just might take off and that was my fatal mistake because it took off with a passion, we started with an initial group in Tucson of May of last year and within a couple of months we had several hundred members locally

When membership shot from 60 to 300, as Beal puts it, he thought the world would collapse around him.

4:30 It actually worked at that higher level of membership and I thought, oh, gosh, I'm on to something big here

Little more than a year later, over 147,000 people in over 780 cities in the U.S., Canada and even Germany, China and Brazil are freecycling.

The largest groups are in Portland, Oregon with over 5700 members and in Chicago with over 3200.

The numbers are impressive.

Still Deron Beal admits there's no scientific way to measure how much stuff is staying out of the dump.

9:22 I developed a rough estimate of how much we are saving out of landfills every day with the movement, its somewhere around 10 tons a day, so I suppose on a worldwide scale that ain't a heck of a lot but when you look at some of the bigger groups you know, it's a pretty substantial number if you have 60 items a day not being thrown away, so I think it's making a scratch, if not a big dent

Whatever amount is actually being recycled, it's not costing a dime to make it happen.

That also means Deron Beal doesn't get a dime in return.

He has set up three separate email addresses just to answer questions and comments from local moderators.

Beal would like to upgrade the website and he'd like to hire some help.

14:49 it's a new thing, it doesn't really exist out there, a forum for people to give each other stuff for free, wouldn't it be neat to find a new business model that makes it work without all the ads, without the pop-ups, that's my dream to set up a venue for people to develop local community, to help each other out, and do it in an ad free environment

Beal's setting up freecycle.org as a nonprofit.

And he's taking advantage of his creation as it grows.

12:55 when I picked up the first gift I received it was from somebody who lived three blocks away so I could walk there, it was a George Forman grill of all things which my wife wasn't too tickled about because she's a vegetarian and I walked down there and they said we have chickens do you want six eggs so I got six eggs and I was able to walk home with a nifty almost new George Forman grill and some eggs

And Beal says it's not an unusual to walk away with a little extra.

Track 5 :00 dogs, conversation.:26 barking

Back at Gina and Mike Landry's, Dave Grossman also scored an unanticipated gift� a wobbly television stand.

Even though he doesn't have a t.v.yet.

1:39 Dave: anything else you're getting rid of while I'm here Gina: I think that's it for now, Mike: whatever else doesn't sell on e-bay - laughs -

But the next week, Dave was happy to find two more items from freecycle.org; a couch and a microwave from someone living just a few blocks down from his new place.

For NHPR news, I'm RK