Recalibrating my thinking on recycling

Yesterday a well dressed man, driving a new silver Mercedes went out of his way to collect a 10 year old, 14 inch, colour television - not flat screen or anything like that. I will stress it was fully working, so worth something to somebody, but this was not the sort of needy individual I expected to be using the local Freecycle network. My initial reaction was "No", this ia wrong and not what I intended, but then I started thinking.

Along with many families in the UK, we have been rather wasteful consumers, accumulating the latest, newest, thing without too much thought on what to do with the old stuff. This has resulted in a cluttering at home followed by a struggle to dispose of items.

As a kid, when we had a lot less, jumble sales were the primary route for recycling while also helping worthy causes raise funds. In essence we had regular requests to the door for old clothes, bric-a-brac, books, etc. These would be collected, piled high in some village or church hall and sold to a scrum of humanity. This was sometimes a scary experience, but could be exhilarating too.

These have now declined, for a mix of health and safety and resourcing issues along with competition from new channels. On the one hand local authorities have raised their efforts in recycling. We can debate elsewhere why this is and consider some of the horror stories associated with it, but the truth is that they do it and they set pretty draconian rules around it. They ration what can go in general rubbish and demand, with threat of penalties, that the rest is increasingly separated. Just try and try a car load of miscellaneous refuse or old things to your local refuse centre and see how many different bins you need to use. Just try and put paper in with the hard plastic, or chipboard in with real wood and see the reaction and chastisement you receive.

I hope this separation is truly for processing/recycling and the days of it all being dumped in the same barge and shipped to a third world country are past, but I wonder. On the plus side it must have created hundreds of jobs across the country to police this new industry.

Another channel has been car boot sales. In these you fill your car/van with as much old stuff as you can then pay to congregate with others to set up stall and try and sell it to whoever you can for whatever you can get. This way you are much more involved in the recycling effort and collect some money for it. These used to be fun and reasonably lucrative, but seem t have passed their prime. You can now spend all day, resenting the paltry prices people want to pay, and still get left with half a car load to take home.

eBay has offered a third route. It has been a remains effective, but to a limited degree. We have put up a number of items, many have sold, including an old stone fire place and a room full of dismantled kitchen fittings. On the other hand many things won't / don't sell. We have four pine kitchen/bar stools that have failed to sell twice. We have found turbulence to be a little hit or miss.

With furniture and indeed electrical items, one would like to think someone could use them, but few charities have the ability to collect or store and none will take anything electrical. This came to a head recently when we had a large 40 inch projector TV we no longer wanted. It looked like I was going to have to pay for the local council to collect it and doubtless throw it into a container with tens of other TV's.

Then my wife heard about Freecycle, a collection of local groups where you can post things others can have, or indeed things you want, for free. It is easy to join and in minutes I had posted that large TV and added the smaller one just to see.

Almost a soon as the large TV was posted, someone "grabbed" it for their son who "will love it". The smaller TV took two days but was then collected with 3 hours. I will be interested to see who turns up to collect the big TV, but it feels better that someone will get to use it.

So, back to my thinking. Well re "Mercedes man", I have decided that it is still better this way. The item is off my hands at no cost and someone else will gain some economic value, whether he sells it on, uses it in a room he rents out or something else. I am now thinking what else I can get rid of this way and those kitchen stools are top of the list.

An added and unexpected effect is that I know receive emails from this local group and when see a mail requesting something, be it an old garden shed, a piece of office furniture or a rowing machine, I find myself mentally examining out inventory and actively considering if we can supply and indeed should we? This seems to be win-win.

I commend you to look at www.freecycle.org with an open mind.