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2,000 sign up to local Freecycle group
AN EVIRONMENTALIST is urging Winchester residents to join a growing network of people fighting to reduce the city's waste.
Giles Gooding said more than 2,000 people in the district have signed up to Winchester's Freecycle Group, which the 37-year-old set up in July last year with the aim to reduce the amount of the city's rubbish going to landfill.
The email list exchanges a range of items between its members, which means homes are found for goods that would otherwise be consigned to the rubbish bin. Dehumidifiers, speakers, Hoovers and beds have been among the goods offered to list members, in the last fortnight.
Mr Gooding, said: "When I came across the idea I thought it was good because there's lots of things people don't want. It's not necessarily things of great value.
"People buy things, fashions change and people don't then want them. Lots of them are then just taken to the dump. Freecycle just prevents them from doing that and the extra carbon footprint associated with creating new products.
"It's a local community. I like the fact that people are helping each other. Most people join the group to help other people.
"We have had one or two businesses who have not been honest about what they're doing. Some people take things to sell on, which is not what the group is really about.
"I'd urge people to consider Freecycle when they are chucking perfectly good items out. There's always some out there that will want it!"
Clare Read, a Freecycle member from Alresford, said she has used the community to get items as varied as guttering, bike helmets and an acoustic guitar kit.
The 47-year-old added: "I think it's absolutely brilliant. It stops landfill sites being filled and it makes use of something.
"You see cars being advertised and electrical equipment that's broken! I have heard that people have furnished whole flats from the list."
Mike Mordecai, co-ordinator of Winchester Friends of the Earth, said: "We live in a throwaway society and recycling makes sense so it's something we would encourage.
"The more people that recycle the better, whether that's rubbish or things that are perfectly useable to someone else."
The Freecycle Network was launched in May 2003 to promote waste reduction in Tuscon, Arizona, and to save the desert landscape being taken over by landfills.
The network has around four million members in more than 4,000 regional groups mainly in America, Europe and Australasia.
For more information, visit www.freecycle.org
3:01pm Monday 5th November 2007
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CommentPosted by: Holly Clayton, mauritius on 7:48pm Wed 14 May 08
This is something my family and I have talked about for years. we come from zimbabwe and the waste is such a shame...what you are doing is important.
This is something my family and I have talked about for years. we come from zimbabwe and the waste is such a shame...what you are doing is important.
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