Ever since we heard about the Freecycle concept a couple of years back we've been meaning to join our local Freecycle group. But with modern life being so ridiculously busy we never got round to joining up and it ended up on the back burner for a while.

So in a recent moment of lifehacking, aka getting the house in order, freecycling came up again. Amidst a ton of households items that could make a reasonable bob or two on eBay there are some other items that could certainly go to a good home locally and Freecycle is just the place.

"Alright" you say "You've mentioned Freecycle a few times now, but what exactly is it?"

Good question.

The basic premise is simple; don't throw perfectly good things away, recycle them, give them away for free. Hence Freecycle.

Looking into the history of the Freecycle movement it started in Tucson, Arizona, back in 2003, the brainchild of Deron Beal who worked for a non-profit recycling company. Deron was so incensed at the amount of perfectly decent things that people threw away that he started to try and find homes for the stuff, and that's how the freecycle movement started.

We know just how he feels; at our own local tip there have been full sets of alloy wheels for a Mini, a great big Carlsboro guitar amp and perfectly decent looking bikes just slung away because people can't fix things or simply don't want them any more.

So freecycle is the answer, keeping perfectly usable stuff out of landfills.

Go to freecycle and search for your local group and join up via the Yahoo groups. Our own local group is Farnborough & Aldershot with 4573 members. Worldwide there are 4529 freecycle groups with nearly 5 and a half million members!

Time to have a root around the loft...