Freecycle is a site which organizes regional groups of people and organizations around the idea of reusing items rather than throwing them away. This idea is similar to the various discards listservs, as well as CraigsList’s free section.
When you sign up, you are actually joining a Yahoo Group in which people will post what they have for others to take and use, as well as post for wanted items. I am surprised that this has not been tried on such a large scale before; it is a natural use for social networking.
found via Walt at Random
Freecycle’s been around for some time–I’d just never used it before. The Freecycle Network has even had corporate sponsorship since February 2005, and the origins go back earlier–to May 2003, according to Freecycle itself.