Ever had something perfectly useable you don’t want, but has no resale value? An old laptop that will still work fine as a wordprocessor? Old books. Anything you can’t sell but is not trash.
Because a lot of things get cheaper and cheaper, not everything has a resale value meaning a lot of stuff gets thrown in the rubbish even if it is in mint condition.
There’s a group called Freecycle dedicated to helping people exchange things they don’t need. To make it really work and to encourage existing members to be more active, Taipei Freecycle needs more members.
Currently, there’s a telescope up for grabs. Just join the group and arrange to pick it up. I’ve just found a home for an Onkyo amplifier which needed a part I couldn’t locate in Taiwan. Maybe someone can fix it or cannabalise it.
To make this work, there needs to be a community of people willing to give things away on the understanding that they might find things they want for free too. People need to see it working before they will give things away.
If you do join, post something small ASAP. I just found an old book I’ll never read and posted it, hoping to inspire a bit more activity.
To try to kickstart some activity on Freecycle and show that it works, I posted the first unwanted thing that came to hand. Literally walked into the living room, glanced around and picked up “The Book of God - the bible as a novel” by Walter Wagnerin Jr. A friend left it a long time ago and the authors name was enough to put me off.
I posted it and within 48 hours got a reply. So there must be some more stuff out there that people would pick up.
There are 149 members now, so I assume someone from here joined.
When you post to the group, this goes on the members section of the website and is emailed to those who choose to be updated. Your email address comes with the message, then it’s down to a private arrangement between the people involved to pick it up - presumably, the reciever is expected to do the legwork.
There may be a way of exchanging private messages without revealing your email address but I just use my normal email address.