April 24, 2007	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 06, 1428

LONDON: Our houses are full of them: old computers, fax machines, video players, fridges in the garage, vinyl records, unwanted armchairs — things we don’t want but still work. Research by gumtree.com reveals the British dispose of over GBP5.6bn worth of usable household items a year, including 1.35m working fridges and freezers, and 2.6m sofas. People out there want our redundant stuff — but how do we find them?

A few weeks ago, I tried to shift a ten-year-old Apple Power Mac and a similarly ancient (in computer terms) Mac laptop. Both worked, so to throw them in a skip would have been wasteful and created toxic waste (computers can contain heavy metals and chemicals). I’d checked the likes of Computer Aid International (computeraid.org) and the Community Recycling Network (crn.org.uk). Both accepted PCs, but the words “ten-year-old Apple Mac” resulted in polite rejection.

So I tried Freecycle, an online forum where people give away and pick up unwanted stuff, free of charge. It has 4,009 communities worldwide and, according to its online counter, 3,401,532 users. I joined my local group and tentatively posted my message: “Offered: Power Mac with printer and Powerbook laptop, bought in 1997 but working fine, need to be collected.” Within three hours I’d had 30 replies. Suddenly my Macs were seen as a valuable resource. Jenny wanted the laptop for her 11-year-old son who was “a Mac fanatic”, while Julie wanted it for her soon-to-be daughter-in-law; Ben needed computers for his charity in Zimbabwe.

It wasn’t easy to decide whom to give them to. Freecycle etiquette dictates that you don’t necessarily give things to the first emailer — and you must reject anyone you suspect wants to sell the goods. I opted for friendly sounding people who could collect immediately: Andy, who’d been on disability benefit for three years, and Ruth, a cash-starved student. Since then I’ve used Freecycle to shift two fax machines, a Zip drive, an office desk, a child’s desk, a malfunctioning Hoover, some kitchen shelves, a washing machine and my local vicar’s sofa bed. Our fridge-freezer went to a woman with cancer who was on a special diet and needed it for her store of juices. Our rubbish was helping someone fight for life.

Then I visited SwapXchange, which offers items to swap from all over the country via its website (swapxchange.org). I exchanged a juicer and a Kenwood mixer for a bottle of organic wine apiece. The site offers anything from a therapy couch to a garden shed; items wanted include a tumble dryer and a garden bench in exchange for a piece of commissioned pottery. SwapXchange started life as Swap It, a site set up in 2001 by community development worker Ellie Dale. Originally it covered just Bath and north-east Somerset, in the west of England, but it became SwapXchange and went national in 2004. “We were the first swapping site in the UK,” says Dale. “Our aim is to have a SwapXchange for every area. It’s ideal for house clearances — one man had a huge collection of radios and we found a home for them all.”

My local SwapXchange has shifted more than 14 tonnes of items, says Charles Dent from Islington Borough Council in north London. “In fact, we’ve just had two houses swapped on the site; at the other end of the scale we’ve had a toaster swapped for a bottle of real ale.”

In the UK if people are still unsure about how to declutter, they can try national charity Waste Watch (wastewatch.org.uk), which will provide details of organisations in your area that can recycle both home and workplace waste, including computers, electrical goods, metals, paper and glass. Spokeswoman Tina Gillies says: “It doesn’t matter how you declutter, as long as you avoid adding to our waste mountain. Giving stuff away or swapping it can feel great, but if you make a bit of money out of it, that’s fine, too.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service