Freecycle or JumbleAID?
Many of you will have heard of Freecycle. We at JumbleAID were inspired by Freecycle over 2 years ago when we were having a conversation about the ‘Throwaway Society’ and what could be done to help unlock the value of second hand stuff. The truth of the matter is that even the most environmentally aware people these days find it hard not to accumulate unwanted second hand items in their loft, garage, spare room or shed.
Freecycle was one option we looked at for passing on some of our second hand stuff, and whilst we were delighted with the sentiment, some of us were not keen on the process of using emails to alert people of second hand items that we wished to give away.
Freecycle is a fantastic movement with over 1.4 million registered members in the UK. These are people who have also been inspired by the ethos of Freecycle and the idea of giving second-hand stuff away rather than sending it to landfill. But like some of us, there are a proportion of these people who no longer use Freecycle because the process does not suit them.
There have also been criticisms in the past that sites that promote reuse like Freecycle actually deprive charity from a lot of items that could be sold through their charity shops. There is some truth in that, however, a lot of the items that go through Freecycle would be of no interest to charity shops.
Charity shops are fantastic and for the charities that have them, they can make quite a contribution. But there are many charities that do not have shops.
Going back 2 years, we thought how great it would be if we could create a website with a similar ethos to Freecycle – that of ‘Giving’, that would suit those people who are not comfortable with the freecycle process and that could also have the potential to help all charities. That is when we came up with JumbleAID!