Freecycle Rant

From Fozzee.net

For those of you who don't know, Freecycle is an online service that uses Yahoo Groups to facilitate gratis transfer of unwanted goods. I've been subscribed to Freecycle for some time. Recently, I've gotten more interested in the transfer of unwanted materials, both to and from myself. It's not that I'm a pack-rat, but I really cant stand to discard something that I can see myself using. The core of my rant is this: Where some services, like Craigslist are totally "give only" with wants posted to a separate (and smaller) section, Freecycle seems to be more wants than offers.

Moreover, and this is where I say that Freecycle gets a bit crazy, is that half the wants are one of the following:

• My car has a flat tire, and I drove on it for a week and ruined the rim. I have no money because [insert reason here], and if anyone has a tire for my car, I'd really appreciate it.
• We really "need" a [insert fancy / expensive item that no one ever discards here] for our apartment. If anyone has one that they're getting rid of, we'd appreciate it.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not against helping people in need, but if the purpose of Freecycle and similar services is to move materials from places where they're garbage to places where they'll get used, this seems a bad way to go about it. Maybe it's just my bent on things, but I tend to think of services like this more for giving away piles of dirt and sheds to be torn down than for "I really need [x]". Which brings me to my second point.

Freecycle is a single list, geographically separated. I'm primarily interested in people giving away broken equipment or scrap materials (often not all that different), but my inbox tends to be flooded with housewares, baby clothes, etc.

This rant is a work in progress. I will return