The New Consumerism: Freecycle Registering 50,000 More Each Week Since Wall Street Crashed.

I’m an avid Freecycler. Not only am I saving money and helping the planet all in one fell swoop, I get to meet awesome and imaginative Freecyclers. A while back I posted an offer for the eleven (yes, 11) remote controls I somehow managed to accumulate. Sure enough, a guy wanted to take them all. I had to know — why on earth do you want all 11? Seems he is a night photographer who needs the tiny infrared chips.

Another Freecycler couldn’t use my beat-up bamboo chairs but gave me a carton of speckled eggs from her own chickens. Another loaded up my leftover lumber; she brought me wild blueberries, a great smile and a dose of neighborliness I sorely need.

Freecycling is all about serendipity. You never know who is going to turn up to pick up your treasures or offer up a treasure of their own. Recently we received a grand player piano — an unwieldly ancient bulwark of a thing that required three men to lift. The beauty came with a set of equally ancient piano rolls; the kind of thing only an early jazz lover would adore. It just so happens that my ex-husband is one of those jazz fanatics with a lust for 1920’s tunes. And it just so happens that my ex-husband is recovering from cancer and needs to pump those weak legs of his — which is how those piano rolls work. It takes powerful pumping to get them going.

The scoop on Freecycle:

Welcome! The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,617 groups with 6,030,000 members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them’s good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on “Browse Groups” above the search box. Have fun!

Business Week has a great article on this growing trend. Send it to your favorite AIG agent. Maybe he can Freecycle a few of those souvenirs he picked up at the St. Regis Resort the week we after we bailed them out.