Online

http://www.communityfreebay.co.uk

what rubbish
Heard of ebay? Now comes freebay. Community freebay helps people in Warwickshire and Coventry, uk, pass on things to others that they would otherwise throw away as 'rubbish' -- a phenomenon omnipresent in developed countries.

The website allows people to contact people by e-mail to give or receive free things. The website is run by the uk -based group Action 21. The group focuses on the areas of food, energy, transport and waste.

What's the need for such a website? Only a developed country can tell you that. uk produces more than 434 million tonnes of rubbish every year -- not garbage but things that people throw out -- they might be still functioning.

Electrical and electronic goods make up on average 4 per cent of European municipal waste. In uk alone, households throw out more than 240,000 tonnes of wood-based products each year, besides junking about 1.5 million tonnes to civic disposal sites. With such a large ecological footprint of an average developed country citizen, the website seems an innovative option.

So what does the site have to offer? From electrical appliances to sewing machines, from old clothes to dog-houses. People come online looking for things as odd as pet mice.

Well it might work for the UK, but let's hope India doesn't reach a point of consumptive behaviour where it too needs a website like this.