Freegle

Freegle was formed on 11 September 2009 after many Freecycle groups in the UK decided to break away from the US parent organisation following disagreements on how groups in the UK should operate and the dismissal of long-term UK moderators, who had been speaking out.^[1][2][3][4]

Each local Freegle group is run by volunteers, is autonomous and affiliates to the national Freegle Ltd organisation provided they meet basic requirements such as being free to join and everything handed on must be free and legal.^[5] Freegle Limited is a registered society under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 and an exempt charity.^[6]

In January 2021, there were 453 groups, supported by about 449 volunteers, with 3,267,715 members in the UK.^[7]

Freegle groups are hosted on Freegle's own open source platform. A lot of Freegle groups are also accessible via the Trash Nothing website.

In April 2015 the Freegle mobile app was launched to allow access to Freegle Direct groups on Android, iOS and Kindle phones and tablets.^[8]

• Gift economy
• Freecycle
• Reciprocal altruism
• Reuse
• Sharing
• Sharing economy
• Circular economy
• Waste Hierarchy