It' s like a car -boot sale where everything is free and you don't have to leave the comfort of your home to browse!

As Freecycle say on their website (www.freecycle.org) "it' s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfill. "

Membership of Freecycle is free and you can sign up online.You'll have access to a group near you and can browse all the items on offer.The Peterborough group has over 6,000 active members.

It' s also a low effort way of offloading anything and everything from mis- matched paving slabs, to old electrical items, furniture and baby clothes. One lady I met from Dogsthorpe used it to find a good home for her piano!

If you live in Peterborough you can also take advantage of a little known treasure trove called Re-store. Based in the old Matala Warehouse on East Station Road in the city centre, Re-store is a veritable Aladdin's cave full of unwanted stuff just waiting to be re-used.

It' s the place to go for off-cuts of textiles and even huge rolls of material, buttons, ribbons, those little toys you get in cereal packets or on magazines, paper, card, dried flowers, stationary, paints; in short, everything you could possibly want for an arts and crafts project.There is also a section with furniture, kitchen equipment and carpets.

Re-store charges a small annual membership fee which allows you to visit whenever you like.The centre is not-for - profit and run by volunteers who do a sterling job reducing what we send to landfill.

Another resource available in Peterborough is the Eastex Materials Exchange.This free scheme was launched in 2005 by Peterborough Environment City Trust (PECT). Since this time it has ensured over 10,000 tonnes of useful material have been 're-homed' rather than sent to landfill. Eastex is designed to work with larger amounts of material and is ideal for use by schools, businesses, community groups and charities.

Eastex provides financial benefits for both the business or group getting rid of an item they consider waste, and the recipient at the other end who considers the item a great resource.

The service works with both one-off items and ongoing waste streams including office furniture like desks and chairs, used cooking oil, electrical equipment, out of date food products, skip loads of rubber off-cuts, scraps of wood, security cameras, and even a kitchen sink!

As newcomer to the world of freecycling and reuse, Marion from John Clare

Cottage said "We've got loads of useful materials free and got rid of things we no longer needed.

Much better than taking it to the landfill and ideal in these times of recession."