Freecycle Diaries: Want my tatty sofa?

Welcome to the Freecycle Diaries, in which Natasha Lomas puts the web giveaway service to the test - and shares her experiences, for better and for worse. In this first episode she starts off trying to unload a well-loved sofa.

Like the bike in your shed at the bottom of the garden, the Freecycle network has been knocking around for a few years. The premise is simple: we all have things we don't want or need any longer, so why not give them away to people who do want/need them?

There's a little more to it than that. Freecycle is community focused - so the giving and getting is intended to be a fairly local affair. And people who use the network are often already involved in good works or worthy causes - which means the kind of stories you're likely to hear run along the lines of somebody's disabled brother desperately seeking a laptop, say, or a local theatre group needing some props for a production of Guys n' Dolls. You get the idea.

The first UK group was set up in London in October 2003, according to the Freecycle UK network. Aside from encouraging people to give away things they don't need, the network's main aim is to reduce waste by recycling - in the 'reusing' sense of the word.

Unlike eBay Freecycle is not a one-stop shop. Instead it's a collection of individual groups, each tied to a city, borough, county or the like. For instance, there's a group for Hackney, London with 3,712 members, while Anglesey, Wales has just 113 members.

To join a particular group you have to register an email address. Groups use a Yahoo! Groups infrastructure. Once approved as a member, you can start posting messages offering or asking for items, and reading what others have posted. It's all very friendly and informal although like many a web community there is a preferred etiquette and postings are supposed to follow a uniform style.

The tatty sofa

I came across Freecycle in late 2005. I was in the process of moving to a smaller flat and needed to ditch several large items - including a comfortable but slightly tatty sofa. It wasn't needed in my new flat but still had couch potato potential.

The Ealing Council website detailed a special removal service for junking "bulky items" (at £20 - and one council 'inspection' - a time) but I couldn't shake the feeling it was a crying shame to send a trusty old sofa to the tip. Surely someone could give it a new home? So, after a tip from a friend, a spot of surfing and one painless registration form later I was signed up to Ealing Freecycle.

Finding a new home for the sofa was easier than I expected. Within days of posting my message - 'OFFERED: W13 - Laura Ashley two-seater sofa burgundy - very comfy!' - Janet, Fatuma and Anne had requested photos, and Patricia and Jude had asked for dimensions.

Then an email dropped into my inbox from someone called Silas. He wrote:

Hi there

I'm just setting up a charity - The Rag Factory (www.ragfactory.org.uk) - to provide rehearsal, audition, location & workspace to actors, performers, film-makers, etc. We've got a huge building, not much in it, and a need for your sofa!

I can arrange collection with appropriate transport.

Best wishes

A line in the FAQ on the Freecycle org website offers the following advice for choosing who should benefit from your largesse: "I always ask that people consider giving your starving local charity preference if one should respond." So Silas rose to the top of the pile and a collection date was arranged for the following Sunday.

Did they like it?

One year on, I fire off an email to The Rag Factory to see how the sofa's getting on in its new east London home.

Someone called Melanie soon replies. "Much of our furniture here has been from Freecyclers like yourself, we're living proof of how other people's cast-offs can make a real difference," she writes.

"We're a very young charity, we have no core funding and we've been overwhelmed by the generosity of people in giving us such items as sofas, tables, fridges, chairs, kitchen equipment, crockery and cutlery, timber, plasterboard, paint and, I believe, a toilet as well!"

She adds: "All of the sofas get regular use from the people in the spaces, and various bits of furniture have also been used to adorn the sets of TV pilots, short films, as well as an MTV show called Bustamove… "

So, from living room obscurity to small screen fame - it just goes to show what can be achieved with an internet connection and a bit of goodwill.

Natasha Lomas will be keeping a Freecycle diary over the coming weeks - follow her progress on silicon.com. You can now read the second instalment.