About
Freegle is the UK's biggest online reuse network and helps people give and get things for free in their local community. Some people have stuff they don't want any more. Other people would like things they don't have.
We match them up. As well as saving waste from going to landfill and incineration Freegle provides invaluable help for disadvantaged people, ensuring that they don't have to make financial compromises in order to furnish their homes and get hold of equipment or other things that they may need.
Freegle is free to join, free to use and everything on it is free. We have over 3.6 million members across the UK, 460 local Freegle communities with hundreds of volunteers who support these communities. In the last 12 months we have enabled 16,300 tonnes of stuff to be reused, saving over 8,300 tonnes of CO2 and generating around 11.6m worth of social and economic benefit.
Cat Fletcher is an award-winning and tireless waste-prevention activist, researcher and practitioner. She is at the frontline of facilitating and accelerating reuse in Brighton (UK) and beyond.
In 2009 Cat co-founded Freegle still does all their publicity. Cat is a driving force behind the multi-award winning Waste House at the University of Brighton (built 2012-14) it's 90% constructed with waste which Cat sourced as part of Design Team. Consequently contributing a chapter for Duncan Baker-Brown's 2019 book about the circular economy "The Reuse Atlas" (2017). When she's not talking, lecturing, nagging and enthusing about waste and reuse, Cat is actually enabling it! She operates a creative reuse depot from 12 shipping containers, is sub-contracted by Brighton & Hove City Council, the NHS and others to facilitate reuse for their estates (2014-present).
Cat has contributed to conferences, debates, policy, consultations, tenders, strategy and research programmes for corporates, public bodies and the voluntary sector and is considered an expert in waste prevention and transitioning to a circular economy. Cat has 100k+ social media followers - sharing solutions and inspiration to prevent unnecessary waste. She endlessly collaborates with partners from across all sectors to provide solutions to niche and ubiquitous waste problems.
Edward generates altruism through technology, applying professional IT skills in the charity sector. He essentially keeps Freegle's website running! He also does other developer/architect contracting, typically on complex legacy PHP projects or VueJS frontends and is especially interested in Tech4Good. Every now again he goes for a stroll (e.g. Land's End to John o'Groats, or Cornwall to Norfolk).