The Freecycle Network

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The Freecycle Network (often abbreviated TFN) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in Arizona, USA, that organizes a worldwide network of Free recycling groups, aiming to divert usable goods from landfill. It provides an online registry of worldwide groups, and coordinates the creation of forums for individuals and non-profits to offer and receive free items for reuse or recycling and promoting Gift Economics as a motivating cultural outlook.

Contents

Background

The organization originated as a project of RISE Inc., a nonprofit corporation, to promote waste reduction in Tucson, Arizona, and reduce the need for landfills in Arizona's fragile desert landscape. RISE subsequently handed it over to the project leader, Deron Beal. As Deron and his crews recycled, rather than watching perfectly good items being thrown away, they found themselves calling or driving around to see if various local nonprofits could use them.

Thinking there had to be an easier way, Beal set up the first Freecycle e-mail group for the citizens of Tucson. The Freecycle concept has since spread to over 50 countries, where there are thousands of local groups and millions of members - truly a grassroots effort of people helping people by "changing the world one gift at a time" - The Freecycle network's official tagline.

Each local group currently exists as a Yahoo! Groups mailing list run by volunteer moderators. TFN encourages the formation of new groups, subject to approval by regional New Group Approvers (NGAs). Groups approved by TFN are listed at the official website, can use the name and logo, and are subject to rules enforced by a structure of global and regional GOAs (Group Outreach Assistants). TFN originally planned to move in 2004, then in 2005, and then in early 2006 from Yahoo! Groups to a centralized site, custom-made for the purpose; these plans have now been rescheduled for 2007 [1].

On April 2004, The Freecycle Network incorporated under Arizona law, and as of September 2006 is a registered 501(c)(3) charity in the United States.

The TFN logo is a registered trademark of The Freecycle Network in the United Kingdom and Europe, CTM Reg. No. 4287553.

The Freecycle Network structure

Successes

TFN has grown rapidly into a global organization of over 3800 (October 2006) local chapters [2], and passed the 2 million member mark in February 2006 [3]. As of January 2007, the membership stands at 3,111,276 across 3934 groups. The original idea has since been copied and varied by hundreds of similar groups around the world.

Controversies

Corporate sponsorship

In February 2005, Deron Beal accepted TFN's first corporate support of $130,000 from Waste Management, Inc. [4]. This polarized opinion amongst group moderators. Some saw it as a sensible way of raising funds from a company Beal describes as America's "largest recycler", but others saw it as selling out to corporate interests. Further criticism was provoked by a decision to take paid Google ads on the TFN web site, contrary to the initial stated principles, and by Beal's green ambassador role for WMI [5]. A second grant from Waste Management was received by TFN in February 2006 in the amount of $100,000, bringing total funding to $230,000 from WMI.

Management Structure

Further criticism has focused on the close-knit friends-and-family board structure, which delayed full registration as a non-profit. Although set to a nominal limit of 15, to date it has been limited to founder Deron Beal (chairperson and treasurer), his wife Jennifer Columbus (vice chairperson) and friend Jolie Sibert (secretary), prompting accusations of nepotism. Beal defends this as a necessary interim measure whilst the organization grows rapidly.


Trademark

Beal has been criticized for vigorously defending TFN's trademark, at the expense of closing down functioning community groups and imposing precise rules on logos and language for groups. Beal insists this is solely to prevent commercial interests taking the name and establishing an inappropriate freecycle.com. Critics claim that it could equally be protected from corporate abuse by establishment as a generic term. Ironically, Beal himself initially used freecycle as a generic term, and early documents [6] make frequent references to "freecyclers" and "freecycling", terms which now trigger letters from TFN's trademark protection legal team. A formal trademark opposition [7] was filed in January 2006. FreecycleSunnyvale filed a lawsuit in federal court against The Freecycle Network [8] in January 2006. An injunction was granted against Sunnyvale's freecycling group moderator Tim Oey in May 2006 [9] for allegedly disparaging the TFN trademark. This injunction was stayed in July 2006. During 2006, TFN also pursued other free recycling groups who either mentioned the term "freecycle" or allegedly had "confusingly similar derivations thereof".

The term "freecycle" may have first been used by "Salvager Dali" in Toronto. [10] The concept and term "FreeCycle" were used and trademark asserted by Hemp Online Inc in 2000. [11]

Free speech

Free speech advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales [12] have joined a group of intellectual property lawyers to oppose [13] TFN in an Arizona trademark lawsuit TFN filed against Tim Oey. The basis for the opposition is that the lawsuit violates First Amendment rights.

References

External links



Topics related to The Freecycle Network
| Landfill | Gift Economics | Free Recycling | Waste Hierarchy | Reciprocal Altruism | Sharing | Reuse
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