MacFreeSwap: A Sustainability Case Study

In 2008, the first year the Sustainability Office at Macalester was in operation, it became clear that a free stuff listing service for campus would be a welcome addition to the services already provided by the office. And so, the sustainability manager then developed a listing service on 1600 Grand (a website internal to Macalester). Facilities Services staff then suggested that there should be a specific location where students, faculty, and staff could bring things, so the Sustainability Office set up a small free table in the office. The response was overwhelming, enough so that the table started looking less and less like an office, and more and more like a hoarder's garage. And so, FreeSwap was tucked in a former closet, with the hopes that it would be less of an eyesore for the folks working in the building where it was housed. Around the same time, a Free and For Sale facebook page was created within the Macalester community to extend FreeSwap into students' homes, as as to facilitate the exchange of items much too big to bring to campus.

Want to start your own FreeSwap? 

 All you need is a free area, constant attention, and good signage. Sustainability Office student workers keep it neat and pull out inappropriate things from it (often bras and underwear). The bras are sent off occasionally to a non-profit which sends them to domestic violence shelters. At the end of terms and the end of summer extra material gets donated to Goodwill. We divert lots and lots of material, but due to the egalitarian principles of FreeSwap and the busy schedules of our student workers we don't always have a chance to weigh everything before it gets snagged.