Photo Credit: http://groups.freecycle.org/Freecycletelaviv/description

Over a year ago a letter was published in the Esra magazine #137 asking people to join the Freecycle Network – a nonprofit independent body that enables global recycling via the internet.

Zeev Shimron, an expert on ecology and an environmental engineer, started the Herzliya chapter of this organization in 2006. It is a way of reducing waste by exchanging articles via the internet without any financial gain. It started in the USA and now has more than 4 million members from Istanbul to Israel. It boasts of keeping more than 3 million tons of trash out of landfill every day. As they say ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’.

In a report from the organization in the States is a story about a ninety eight year old man who collects bicycle parts, assembles them to make complete bicycles and then distributes them to disadvantaged children.

Zeev discovered that most of the people joining Freecycle in Israel are English speakers. Among these are new immigrants who do not have any other means of making the necessary connections and this is an easily accessible forum. For instance, one asked for a bicycle and a child seat that had been stolen, another needed a door for a microwave.

Pat Zuckerman and Raya Fingerman plus their volunteers of Esra have also done this without the internet and without the ‘ecology’. They first helped the Russian immigrants in the 1980s then the Ethiopians, after that the Argentinians and they continue to supply disadvantaged persons with goods that are passed on to them by those not needing the items. Most recently a young Ethiopian pianist living in Kfar Saba received a piano that was 'up for taking' – a real mitzvah. Pat and Raya's motto is, “Nothing goes to waste”.

Freecycletelaviv@yahoogroups.com

For Esra’s own ‘recycling’ program – contact Pat Zuckerman 09 955 0880 or Raya 09 957 0733