Packrats thrive in cyberspace

When Claudia Crowley came across a picture of a cow skull on the Internet, she knew it would hang perfectly on the back of her father's Southern-style fence. Best of all, the skull -- with glued-on horns and a bullet through its head -- was free.\nA few days later, she had the skull in her home.\nWhen she gave her father the three-pound cow cranium, it was then she realized that The Freecycle Network, www.freecycle.org, an international Yahoo! community group, actually worked. In fact, it was genius.\nFreecycle, a grassroots movement started in May 2003, serves as a way for people to give and take items for free in their communities. Each community is run by a volunteer moderator; there is no cost to sign up, and everything posted must be 100 percent free.\n"Part of the mission of The Freecycle Network is about keeping good stuff out of landfills, the other part is fostering local gifting communities," said Deron Beal, Freecycle's founder. "Money is not allowed for a reason. It's about letting go and helping others without any expectation."\nAfter receiving the cow skull, Crowley was ready to give back to her online Texas community. She posted a message announcing she didn't want her Indian hawthorn bushes outside her home.\nWithin a few days, a fellow Freecycler dropped by her house to dig them up.\n"It's like seeing a huge river of flak and junk," Crowley said. "It's flowing into the dump, and we irrigate it -- we send the pieces where they go."\nCrowley, a Freecycle moderator in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, usually reads about 60 e-mails a day from more than 5,000 members in her Yahoo! community group. She spends about two hours a week moderating messages to make sure they are following Freecycle's etiquette guidelines.\nFreecycle materials must be free, legal and appropriate for all ages. Politics, spam, money and trading are not allowed. Under certain restrictions, some communities allow members to Freecycle pets. Using the correct subject lines is also important. These should consist only of OFFER, TAKEN or WANTED. \nShipping or handling is not involved because members are only allowed to Freecycle within their own communities. \nFor members who do not follow the rules, there are consequences.\n"You're going to have to keep folks in line," said Michael Bertrand, a Freecycle moderator in Vancouver, Canada. "I generally give people a warning message if they bring money or bartering into the equation. If they don't heed the warning, they either get banned or I put them on 'moderated status,' where I have to approve all messages they send."\nThere are more than 1,300 U.S. cities involved in The Freecycle Network, from Los Angeles to Birmingham, Ala., the Pocono Mountains of Pa., and Missoula, Mont. There's even a 12-member group in Kauai, Hawaii.\nStephen Udycz, the Freecycle moderator in Portland, Ore., spends about three hours a week looking at messages on one of the country's largest Freecycle communities, which has more than 9,000 members. \nClothing articles and beds are popular items requested, but he's also seen people freecycle a telephone pole, two tons of dirt and an engine block.\n"It benefits the community in the way that it forces people to give goods to other people, increasing community involvement," Udycz said. "Our community is special because it exists almost completely in cyberspace, but on a local level."\nThe Freecycle Network has also reached 140 international communities. There are 21 community groups in Germany, a 33-member group in Seoul, Korea, and groups stationed in Trinidad, Israel and Spain.\nSix hundred people found out about Vancouver's community when Bertrand posted a message to a local Yahoo! group for anarchists and single mothers. When the cyberspace community received attention from local community newspapers, the group gained more than 1,000 new members.\nSmall appliances, tents, books, stoves and refrigerators are popular items freecycled in Vancouver.\n"When people ask me about weird items, I always think of the person who gave away three doors," Bertrand said. "I guess they had too many."\nThere are more than 30 Indiana Freecycle community groups, totaling 6,500 members in the state. The Bloomington-Bedford Freecycle community, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BBINFreecycle, recently got its start and already has 80 members.\nLocal residents can find women's size 18 jeans, a portable dog play pen and end tables. Members also are offering 25 bridal shower invitations, a computer monitor and a V-Tech cordless phone.\n"Once you get a group started, the word spreads," Crowley said. "It's a remarkable social movement, and it will be interesting to see how it develops."\nUdycz expects to see more exchanges in Bloomington take place near the end of the year due to students moving in and out of their dorms.\n"Couches, beds and posters that could end up in the dumpster could easily be freecycled," Udycz said.\nWith free unwanted objects can come more wants than offers. \n"Students could find items that others would have easily thrown away," Bertrand said. "But there's the sad fact that in a college town, you'd have a lot more people wanting things than people with things to offer."\n— Contact staff writer Jessica Levco at jlevco@indiana.edu.