/green

I read about freecycle.org in a copy of my slightly 'lefty' newspaper (The Guardian) and so I tried it out by giving away a crummy (or so I thought) Ikea sofa and an old frog-shapped sandpit (don't tell my daughter).

As soon as I had listed the items I was beating off prospective owners with the proverbial stick!

Originally I had tried selling the items in my local paper -I had no luck - but thanks to freecycle.org the sofa and the sandpit went to happy homes - all now I have are two very nice "thank you" emails.

So I would have too say try freecycle.org, you have nothing to lose (except your unwanted items of course) and it will be one less thing going to landfill.

I'm a huge fan of Freecycle. I think it would probably make a fascinating sociological study. For instance, posh communities use Freecycle as a cheap way of getting rid of stuff they don't need any more and poorer ones use it was a way of acquiring stuff for nothing. So Freecycle's a kind of redistribution mechanism: shifting stuff around along informal routes.

I think most of the stuff people get rid of is probably beyond eBay. Car boot sales, maybe, but not eBay. Mind you, I did once see a 1950s Leica on my local Freecycle list... I wrote to the guy offering it and begged him to take it to an auction house or something but it was already too late.

And while I'm here I think I should link to GreenMetropolis which is a sort of clearing house for secondhand books. It's a good place to unload old books - and you actually get paid for them.