Value Hidden in Plain Sight


Hidden in Plain Sight

The Untapped Freecycle Economy

Freecycling… enables communities to find, free up, and use assets hidden in plain sight to add value to community net worth.

There are vast pools of wealth hidden in plain sight right before our very eyes in most communities throughout western society. Our homes are like icebergs.

20% of our stuff is visible and in use. But 80% of our stuff is hidden, tucked away, unused in attics, basements, closets, drawers, glove compartments, trunks. We acquire it, use it for a while (or sometimes not at all), then tuck it away out of sight, often with most of its useful life unrealized. We pretty much never audit our stuff to see what we have and what it might be worth.

In freecycling, group members of freecycling communities regularly "audit" their stuff and uncover assets with real value hidden away in their homes, or destined for the landfill. Maybe they’ll decide, "Wow, I forgot I had this" and put it to use immediately. And maybe, they’ll "release" the inherent value of those assets and make them available within their local communities. People can get useful stuff without having to buy it.

Freecycle kind of gently forces us to recognize that our stuff has value, perhaps not to us, but to others. Someone can actually USE that stuff. Stuff that is tucked away in closets, basements, drawers, garages, automobile trunks, etc. has no value, it’s worthless, if it is just sitting there, unused covered in cobwebs and collecting dust. In fact it probably costs us. We have to "warehouse" that stuff, heat it in winter, cool it in summer. And, space, heating, cooling cost us real $$. However, when it that stuff is discovered and made available to local communities, the trapped value is released. Freecycle members can "shop" for that stuff on local freecycle venues. And, they get useful stuff with value for nothing… free! Just imagine, useful stuff, FREE!

Freecycle 2003
When it was first conceived, Freecycle was limited to heading off the flow of good stuff into landfills in Tucson Arizona. But, in our view, that was just the very tip of the
iceberg. Such a limited view! The founders never thought of it as a movement which would spread to all corners of the earth. And they didn’t even think about all the stuff hidden away in our homes beneath the surface.

Freecycle 2020
Since the idea of freecycling was launched in 2003 in Tucson AZ, it has expanded and spread around the world. There are communities of people practicing "freecycling" in more than 100 countries involving more than 10 million people. Since its inception, many "flavours" of freecycling have emerged… Freecycle, Trashnothing, Buy Nothing, Freegle, Re-Useit, Pay-It-Forward, a huge proliferation of Facebook-enabled groups, you name it.

But, so far as I am aware, there have been no organized ways to count up and quantify the value that these re-use efforts contribute to the economy / well being of societies. The value of freecycling is totally unaccounted for. Millions of freecycling transactions occur every day resulting in the "release" of real value in many, many communities around the world. Here’s a challenge for economists. Can you design some kind of simple methodology to account for the value that this phenomenon adds to our economies?

By Eric "Gub" Snyder

Sunday, 2020-12-13 10:50 AM;


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