Offered, Wanted, Taken
Imagine a cross-border, 24-hour garage sale where everything is marked “Free.” Who tends this market? Kelly McCarthy-Maine probes the political coups of online recycling groups.
BY Kelly McCarthy-Maine
Illustration by Marc Ngui
Charmaine Jensen answers the phone tersely, a hint of suspicion in her voice. She remains guarded for the first few minutes of our conversation, keeping her answers to my initial questions to one or two words. At one point, I grow concerned enough to ask her if she is all right.
Jensen’s online persona is usually much less subdued. She is the owner of more than one online Elvis Presley fan club and active in several online communities.
What has Jensen out of sorts on this afternoon is her distrust of Freecycle, a group she used to moderate. “I have to be very careful what I say about Freecycle,” she tells me. “I have been warned to stop talking.”
Jensen and her partner, David Voisine, have just pulled off a Freecycle coup, migrating almost 6,000 members of the online community to a new group of their own creation. The move caused a minor furor in the Freecycle community, calling attention to the group’s sponsorship plans and demonstrating that in a world where nothing comes cheap, even freecycling has its costs.
Freecycle is an amazingly popular email listserv created in 2003 by Deron Beal, an environmentalist in Tucson, Arizona, and manager of a non-profit recycling company aimed at keeping useable junk out of desert landfills. Beal started Freecycle in an effort to find homes for the items he rescued. It started as an email to 30 or 40 friends and a handful of neighbourhood non-profit organizations, and in just two years membership has grown to include more than a million and a half users in 3,000 neighbourhood groups in 30 countries.
Beal estimates that Freecycle diverts 50 tons of waste from landfills every day. It works like this: You sign up as a member in one of the 200 local Freecycle chapters in communities throughout Canada. Then the messages, sometimes hundreds a day, arrive in your email inbox. Members compose messages if they have something to offer, with a short description in the subject line.
This free exchange of goods has been dubbed “a phenomenon” by CBC’s Marketplace, and BBC News has nicknamed Freecycle “eBay’s philanthropic cousin.” Some of the items on offer are everyday household goods, such as couches, kids toys and camping equipment that could just as easily be sold in garage sales or in thrift stores. And sometimes it gets a little more personal, with maternity gear, fat and skinny clothes and wedding dresses up for grabs. Then, it can get downright obscure, with worm colonies, pink flamingos, flocks of plastic butterflies, hot tubs and once “magnets for a time machine” offered free to good homes. Even expensive electronics are passed around, along with the occasional car, school bus, cell phone and event tickets.
Freecycle’s mission statement captures the beauty of the cause: “to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources and eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.” But communities have to deal with personalities and conflicts, and even with its philanthropic intentions, Freecycle has had its share of difficulties.
Charmaine Jensen became owner of the 6,000-member Freecycle Toronto in 2004. Freecycle rules (and there are a bunch) dictate that group owners live in the communities that they moderate. Jensen lives in Ajax, about an hour’s drive from Toronto. When she partnered with David Voisine, dubbed “the internet spam king” in some media reports, she became Freecycle’s worst nightmare.
The first indication that the relationship was on the skids was when a member posted a message offering up an archery bow and arrow set. The post set off an international consortium of group owners, dubbed the ModSquad, who thought the post contravened Freecycle’s “safe and appropriate for all ages” rule.
“Freecycle has basic rules, really simple rules that are easy to follow,” says Nancy Daniels, Freecycle’s group outreach administrator for Ontario. In fact, one of Freecycle’s rules is “be nice.” Keeping it “free, legal and appropriate for all ages” is the guiding rule, followed by another banning politics, personal attacks, rudeness, proselytizing and a warning to group owners not to be dictators.
It was the rule against politics that next set off Jensen’s ire. In May, a member of the US group posted an offer for bumper stickers bearing the phrase “Same-sex marriage is a civil right,” leftovers from a gay pride event. According to Jensen, some members of the ModSquad went berserk.
Wedding dresses and engagement rings pass through Freecycle communities on a regular basis. But it was just same-sex weddings that raised the political flag. Jensen couldn’t tolerate what she felt was discrimination against the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. “It was the bumper sticker that finally broke the camel’s back,” she says.
“In Toronto, we are a loving community that respects all lifestyles and cultures. I believe marriage is a human right and I am not afraid to speak up. The rights of GLBT [Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender] people should be respected,” she adds.
The debates and the flaming were enough to drive her away from Freecycle. But Jensen didn’t leave by herself—she packed up all 6,000 members of Freecycle Toronto and transferred them to her own, new group, called Free Reuse. Though she claims to have notified members, some simply started getting messages with the name of the new group attached.
It was at the end of May that Jensen sent notice of her Freecycle abandonment to the Group Outreach and Assistance Team. The team passed the letter along to Beal.
“This was not a pleasant letter,” Beal recalls. But Beal responded to her resignation by wishing her well and thanking her for her time as a local Freecycle volunteer moderator. He also offered Jensen an invitation back into the Freecycle community, if she changed her mind. Jensen has not changed her mind; if anything she has become more determined in her crusade to spread Free Reuse.
Some members found out about the unauthorized switch and trickled back to form a new Toronto Freecycle, whose membership has built back up to 1,000. Others have found out and don’t care what group they belong to, as long as there is free stuff to give and receive. And it is entirely possible that many members still don’t know about the switch.
“With Free Reuse, we have guidelines, but they are just guidelines,” Jensen says. “If other groups want to form and call themselves Free Reuse, that is fine. If they decide not to follow our guidelines, that is fine. It will be outside our control to change it. And that is just the way that we want it to be.”
Tim Oey, longtime Freecycle volunteer, cautions that “people who sign up to be moderators tend to be outspoken and have strong opinions. This sets things up for future disagreements, as has happened and will continue to happen.”
“Charmaine is a rather emotional individual,” says Beal. “People can be passionate about their local groups and I respect that deeply.”
Despite Freecycle’s collection of strong personalities, Beal is committed to keeping an amicable, responsible tone in all communications, reminding “members and moderators to respect each other’s missions and not to flame each other’s groups.” But there were warning signs before Jensen’s eventual break with Freecycle. She was already at philosophical odds with Beal’s decision to accept more than $100,000 in sponsorship money from Waste Management (WM), a garbage and recycling giant.
Waste Management of Canada, based out of Burlington, Ontario, provides collection, recycling and disposal services in eight Canadian provinces, serving more than 4 million residential customers and almost 170,000 industrial and commercial users.
“A number of people have taken issue with Freecycle getting funding from Waste Management because it has often been the ‘evil empire’ in environmental circles,” remarks Oey. But Oey maintains that Waste Management is just the organization stuck with dealing with our garbage, and that the finger eventually points back at consumers for creating all that garbage in the first place.
“Although Waste Management has had some problems, it does seem to be trying to clean itself up,” reminds Oey.
Taking a leadership role in recycling initiatives like Freecycle is one way WM is working to improve its reputation with environmentalists. The company is also converting 400 vehicles to clean-burning natural gas, converting landfill gas into energy and promoting solid waste as an alternative to fossil and nuclear fuel.
Jensen was not alone in questioning the sponsorship money. Other Freecycle members were offended that their efforts toward ecological and community stewardship were being rented out. Many were insulted that Beal would accept money for a network built on free principles. For his part, Beal says the sponsorship money will ultimately benefit the group, allowing him to leave his full-time job and devote all of his energies to Freecycle—seeking out even more sources of sponsorship funds. “We will need much more than a total annual budget of $130,000 for an organization with more than 1.3 million members,” he adds.
In fact, Freecycle is mounting several legal campaigns aimed at defending its trademark name and logo rights in the United States, Canada and Europe. At the moment, some of the legal services are being donated pro-bono. “Were we not to do anything, we would lose the name Freecycle,” Beal says. “If we don’t protect it, someone else will take it.”
Some volunteers, including Oey, are concerned about Freecycle’s preoccupation with protecting its trademark. He would rather see the word enter the public domain—free of charge. Oey decided to scale back his involvement with Freecycle, but still moderates the 2,000-member Sunnyvale Freecycle, just outside of San Jose, California. But other disillusioned Freecyclers are taking the original spirit of environmental gifting and community stewardship and building their own online recycling groups.
That’s exactly what happened in Saskatoon. First, disagreements flared up over Saskatoon’s legal entitlement to use the Freecycle trademark name. Then, this past January, a few days after Beal reported to Yahoo that the group was stealing his name and logo, Yahoo deleted the group without notice.
Cyndi Dreger, the original owner of Saskatoon Freecycle, and her husband, Len, salvaged the membership list and sent an email inviting former Freecyclers to join a new group, Saskatoon Curbcycle, a spin-off recycling group that has since expanded into several communities. Many members of Curbcycle are former Freecyclers tired of the politics of belonging to such a large group. Saskatoon Curbcycle is co-moderated by three people, and they don’t seem to be having any problems sharing nicely. “Our philosophy is we are all adults, and once you post a want or offer, we pretty much let you do your thing,” Dreger says.
Beal has mixed emotions when it comes to splinter online recycling groups. He regrets the incidents that have forced former Freecyclers to create independent groups, but his message remains positive, and he thanks people who donate their time to the recycling movement. “Everyone who has been involved with Freecycle and gone on to create other online gifting communities has done a world of good,” he says. “Having groups competing to give away free stuff and keep good stuff out of landfills is not a terrible problem to have.”
Daniels is a bit more reserved in her opinion of copycat groups. “People join Freecycle,” she says, “they don’t want to join Me Cycle.” But despite her reservations, she wishes start-up online recycling communities luck, saying, “I see the movement expanding like crazy—how can it not? It is just such a great benefit.”
The Freecyclers and unbranded online recyclers are all getting back to what they all have in common: building communities and keeping good stuff out of the dump. But will drama continue to get in the way of this environmental, philanthropic mission? Jensen seems to think so. “There is a mole that is harvesting our membership [at Free Reuse]. Someone has infiltrated our membership and is luring them away,” she says. “I bet I know who that is.”
