Freecycle and Freegle

I first saw that there was something strange going on when I looked at the Self Sufficientish forum, which I browse through every week or so. Someone was complaining bitterly about the American founders of the Freecycle movement and how they were throwing moderators out of the system seemingly without warning. Some of the UK group moderators have thus left the Freecycle system and started their own, Freegle, which they believe they can better tailor to the needs of the local groups (by having Freecycle points at local landfill sites, for example). In this area, the Brecon and Hay group have gone over to Freegle - they more or less said they'd jumped before they were pushed, but the Hereford group seem to have stayed with Freecycle.

I don't think it makes much difference to the ordinary person who just wants to get rid of the contents of their shed without going to landfill, but it obviously has made a lot of difference to those dedicated volunteers who run the show behind the scenes.

Here in Hay, being on the border as ever, we have the choice of either or both the Hereford or Brecon systems.
I think I'd look at the Freegle option, myself, if I were thinking of joining, as it's UK based, and appears to be more democratically run than the American version, from what I can gather. As it happens, I'm now a member of both, without having done anything at all, so we'll see how it goes from here.