Yes, people can make a difference

I admit many of my posts on the state of the environment and the lack of action by those in authority can leave people wondering, can we as individuals make a difference?

The answer is yes. We can reject consumerism, we can reuse and recycle between each other, we can meet new people, and we can create new communities that do give a damn in the process.

One excellent example of this is the Freecycle Network, a grassroots, non-profit network of people across the globe who give and receive stuff for free.

The main Freecycle communities are in the United States (where the movement started in 2003), the UK, Australia, Canada and Germany, but they are to be found in dozens of other countries as well.

I’m not going to describe how it works here – have a look at Freecycle’s website for that.

Instead, I’d like to share an email I received from the excellent and irrepressible Carol, moderator of “our” Freecycle, AberdeenshireWest.

Carol, by the way, is the fairy godmother of Braemar, whizzing here and there in her Tardis-like car, delivering and collecting for all and sundry, organising this, salvaging that, fixing this and pulling the occasional rabbit (well, more like chicken in her case) out of the hat. And all done with a twinkle, a chuckle and a wave of the godmotherly hand!

Anyway, Carol received the email from one of the Freecycle “top guns”, as she calls them, and I quote it with permission:

For the past year or so, Freecycle have been saying that we are keeping over 200 tons a day out of landfills. This number was based on our membership numbers at the time and a study done by Jane Jacobson, the Des Moines moderator, in partnership with the nonprofit “Iowa Recycles.”
But — hold the presses– in the past year alone we’ve added over a million members!
Wow. And we’re currently adding about 20,000 members a week worldwide — pretty inspiring stuff, to say the least. At any rate, updating the 200 tons a day to our current membership, we are now keeping over 300 tons a day out of landfills (313 tons to be exact).
This means that we’ve kept over FOUR TIMES the height of Mt. Everest when stacked garbage truckfulls out of landfills in the past year alone.
That’s a lot of good stuff and a lot of wonderful stories of giving in
over 70 countries which people are sharing with each other.
Well, those are some pretty knock your socks off numbers to chew on.
Yes, folks, we’re burning off those landfill pounds during the
holidays.. .
And to quote a great local mod, in doing so, we’re “changing the world one gift at a time.”

Yes, people can make a difference even when governments, policy makers, and businesses won’t. And we can do it by giving gifts.

In our case alone, Freecycle has made a huge difference. We’ve been given a vast dining table, a mahogany cabinet, a chest freezer, a sofa, crockery, toys, magazines, books and, best of all friendship.

All have made a huge difference to us and we’d like to think that the stuff we’ve given and the friendship that went with them has made an equal difference to others.

So don’t throw it, Freecycle it.