Faircycle.com is a privately owned, for profit business operated by Faircycle.com Ltd. (UK reg. 06646270) which might seem a little odd so let us explain why.

Just as in the hippocratic oath, it is our stated aim to: first do no harm.

In truth, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone has to pay for everything from the designer's fees to the daily running costs and even though we operate on a shoestring budget right now, the business will eventually have to make a profit so it can continue to run.

The upside of that is twofold:

(a) we are committed to working hard at getting things right for our members and

(b) we can offer services that hobby sites and Not For Profit organisations cannot. All our artwork and out-of-house software is fully licensed and we have donated to the several open-source projects that we're using code from.

However, before we can even make a profit, the business is committed to offsetting every last ounce of carbon it generates - including the personal CO2 created by our team and use products from sustainable resources.

We don't use much paper, but the paper and we do use is all recycled and chlorine free - and this is just the beginning.

• As of this writing, Faircycle is unique in a number of ways, but what separates it from all the other web-based freecycling engines is the trading system. This encourages (and even forces the more reluctant) to give something back to the system. The more you give, they more you get - in more ways than one: Fair to all, not a free for all.
• Faircycle was designed from the ground up. We threw away any notions of what freecycling should be and came up with a system where no one really loses. Traditionally freecycling was done using moderated mailing lists - and this variation still serves a purpose, yet it relies on a content network outside the control of the people who operate the group(s). This is a counterproductive because control and therefore consistency is decentralized and can be even chaotic; with web-based sites, one set of rules fits everyone and everyone knows the rules (or should).
• Faircycle is, we believe, the first freecycling engine to actively and aggressively control its carbon emissions. There's not much point helping to save the planet with one hand, if you're pouring millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere to drive your mail servers. (As of this writing, we're even planning to buy back all the carbon we produced building the site.)
• Faircycle believes in complete transparency and as a business it is required by law to publish audited, publicly visible accounts. Anyone can study our posted accounts to check up that we're doing what we say we are.
• Because we're professionals, we aim to deliver a service that non-professionals cannot - and a site to match.
• And we keep our promises.

To reduce our carbon footprint and lower what the techies call "bandwidth" the gurus in Faircycle's development team are always seeking new and innovative solutions. Bandwidth is the amount of information the system delivers down the wire (the amount of traffic on the highway, if you prefer) so at Faircycle our systems are designed with neat solutions to reduce our bandwidth as much as possible while still maintaining an excellent user experience. Caching helps reduce power usage everywhere and although small, it's still a saving. Here are a few examples:

SophiaEngine, the software driving Faircycle is built atop a lightwork PHP framework designed by Rick Ellis of Ellislabs; and PHP is still one of the best general-purpose web scripting languages there is. The name derives from the ancient greek word meaning wisdom or knowlege and part of our mission is to help educate the next generation to take more care of our home: and this requires knowlege so there you have it.

1. Every page that has (cacheable) static content is aggressively cached by our server and sent with instructions to each server en-route to do the same: so as the site gets busier, there's a good chance that most content is already held locally to any given user either on their computer or a "proxy" at their local ISP.
2. Most of our content is compressed automatically so less of it has to travel over the wire in the first place.
3. We make extensive use of technologies like AJAX which load just the parts of page that change - thus reducing our bandwidth usage still further.

Freecycling originated in the US as a method of giving away old or unwanted goods to prevent them ending up in waste disposal sites, being burnt and contaminating the atmosphere or otherwise being a menace to the planet we all have to share. It's a great idea but has become somewhat political with disparate mailing lists, well-documented infighting and even the odd website all copying the basic idea.

So the boffins at Faircycle took the core recycling idea, dragged it from the primordial miasma of unreliable mailing lists, gave it a good old shake, a hot wash & wax, blow dry and finally polished it until it shone so bright you could see your face in it.

And so Faircycle was born. They wiped the sweat from their brows and put down their dictionaries... Although the core idea remains the same, Faircycling introduces Limes - a virtual currency if you like. Limes enable our users to put a purely virtual value on the things they want to gift. You get limes by selling your stuff so in order to buy things from other members, you're encouraged to sell your own unwanted goods.

We aren't a big corporation and we don't hide behind lots of red tape but this is a commercial venture as much as it is a labour of love so we do ask that you respect our copyrights and trademarks in the same way as you'd have us respect yours. The legal stuff is only there to stop evil corporations taking over and making a mockery of what we're trying to do.

We promise to be completely transparent in everything we do and as a UK limited company you can always inspect a set of audited accounts (subject to the usual fees, etc.) at Companies House. companieshouse.gov.uk for details.

If you like what we do, tell others. If you think we can improve, tell us!