Monday 1 April 2013

Don't throw it away, give it away!

Freecycle Kintyre changes to Greencycle Kintyre. Why?

Actions by the original Freecycle(TM) organization in the USA have resulted in free recycling becoming fragmented, resulting in a drop-off of the numbers of posts to groups. The Ecologist has a good article about what went wrong with Freecycle in the UK.

In Kintyre, freecycle.org had set up a rival group (http://groups.freecycle.org/KintyreUK/, 74 members on 2013/04/01) to the original Yahoo group (FreecycleKintyre, 326 members). Neither was receiving many posts, the momentum perhaps having been lost by the politics and fragmentation. As the "owner" and moderator of FreecycleKintyre, I needed to respond to this confusion and hopefully avoid the continuing wrangle over the Freecycle(tm) name. Therefore, as of 1st. April 2013, the Kintyre Yahoo group has been renamed to GreencycleKintyre and any affiliation to Freecycle(tm) has been abandoned.

In 2009, the general UK response to the issues was the setting up of Freegle, a registered charity in the UK. Now in 2013 I too am considering an affiliation to Freegle. As an alternative, individual subscribers may choose to join the KintyreUK Freecycle(tm) group. It is perfectly possible to subscribe to both USA and UK groups (but not to moderate both). At present, GreencycleKintyre remains independent and affiliated to neither, and I invite comments and opinions from subscribers.

Web Address: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/greencyclekintyre
Moderator: greencyclekintyre-owner@yahoogroups.com
Posts to group: greencyclekintyre@yahoogroups.com