Off Topic: Freecycle

This is off topic, and I try to keep the off-topic political crap on this blog to a minimum. But I do want to put a plug in for Freecycle.

Freecycle is basically a series of locally based mailing lists for the free exchange of things you would have thrown out. My wife and I use it every time we move - we get packing materials from other people who have just moved, and then give them back to our new local group when we are done. We also freecycle all of "that old junk" that we realize we shouldn't move with us to the next location.

If you are ever in a situation where you need to throw out items that are potentially useful but just not worth the cost of carrying anymore, please consider Freecycle - it strikes me as a reasonably reliable way to keep items out of landfills. (Especially hard-to-recycle mixed-material items like electronics.)

One note of caution: freecycle is just a group of people exchanging "stuff" in their spare time - typically it could be 2-3 days before someone can pick up your donated item. So...if you have a lot of stuff to give away, start early. I made this mistake in DC and wasn't able to give away all of the items because people couldn't pick them up soon enough.