Autonomous systems of exchange and free stores can range from pop-up events to small sharing shelves to larger-scale, 24/7 structures, and brick-and-mortar storefronts. And you don’t need a lot of experience to start one! 

Free stores are alive and evolve with their communities’ needs and abilities. In Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, our neighborhood group initially held store events called “Swap, Share and Shmooze.” We eventually launched the Hell’s Kitchen Free Store, a 24/7 outdoor sharing hub. Today, the volunteer community continues to hold pop-up events. 

We love visiting free stores and learning from the awesome folks working on them, large and small, across the globe. This guide includes tips and considerations inspired by our collective best practices and lessons learned to ensure that your free store brings joy, needed resources, and success while remaining manageable. We hope they will be helpful as you work to get one more free store off the ground.

If you build it, they will come—almost guaranteed! 

Identify a good location and space.

There is a lot to consider when securing a good location and getting started, particularly for a community 24/7 free store. This will vary based on your neighborhood, existing relationships, desire to go “by the book,” openness to “going rogue,” and more. For smaller-scale free stores, some folks just put a neighborhood sharing shelf in front of their own home or office. Indoor and brick-and-mortar-free stores are pretty fabulous too, although they are less likely to be accessible 24/7.  For example, the Media FreeStore in Media, PA, has a physical building open for shopping on Wednesdays and Saturdays for four hours a day. Below is a list of considerations for a free store location and space.

Consider convenience, traffic flow, and access.

Relatively quiet side streets, just off a busier street, may work well, with the right balance of quiet and foot traffic. Co-locating with a community fridge or other mutual aid initiative is also good. Ensure the free store is convenient for you and other volunteers to visit regularly.

Good lighting is key. 

Whether light is built into the space, shines from street lights, or if you install it yourself (just beware, someone may think it’s available for taking), a well-lit space becomes better cared for space. 

Ensure the space is accessible.

For free stores to be a community resource to all,  remember the importance of inclusive design, like making sure the store is wheelchair accessible. 

Consider not asking for permission.

Some of the most successful free stores have just set up shop without permission from building owners. This is sometimes the quickest way to get started, which is what we did for the Hell’s Kitchen Free Store. We set up shop in the boarded-up side entrance of a vacant storefront without permission and built trust with the building’s management company. Some landlords see the benefits and let it be. Some take it all down. And some may try to work out signed agreements. 

Explore collaboration and partnership.

 Several successful free stores have earned an impressive amount of positive media attention and even citations from elected officials. You may find a business or property owner interested in supporting and housing a free store community initiative. Community shops and restaurants may like having free stores nearby. Schools can also make good partners, especially with PTA support. Libraries and community gardens might make sense too.

Consider unconventional spaces.

• Vacant storefronts and boarded-up businesses can work well, especially ones with an awning to provide rain cover. 
• Street parking spaces can be used to transform a public space from something that serves one car owner into something that serves an entire community. It might be possible to partner with a library, community center, restaurant, store, or other establishment to apply for permits and build a “community hub” sharing shelf. Or, of course, you can try it rogue. 
• Remember, anything is possible! Even a driveway could work as a free store location.

Seek neighborhood input. 

Free stores are community initiatives. You may get great location suggestions and some active participants by reaching out to neighbors or local groups.

Physically build the free store.

Building your free store will depend on your location, team, and other variables.

• You may want to start small and create a share shelf with one bookcase and two to three shelves—possibly for just books, like Little Free Libraries. Finding a bookshelf is relatively easy. Many can be found on the street ready for “trash” pickup. Others can be sourced from local Buy Nothing groups on Facebook or through similar freecycle networks.
• A clear sign at the top will help people feel it is legitimate. 
• In the spirit of sharing, reuse, and repurposing, you should be able to acquire or borrow most materials you might need (lumber, nails, tarp, paint, brushes, drill, hammer, etc). Depending on your space, you might not need much in terms of materials. If you want to build an entire structure, the necessary materials can often be found, donated, or purchased at very low cost. Many of the existing free stores are happy to share their architecture models with simple instructions you can replicate, such as The Free Store Project. 

Prioritize safety and security. 

Ask yourself how secure the free store feels. Remember, bookshelves can topple! Drill shelves into plywood walls or determine how to make them optimally safe and secure. Keep in mind that anything and everything at the free store is fair game, so if you are using shelves or baskets that you love for displaying items, remember to nail them down or they will find their way to someone’s home!

Weatherproof

Weatherproofing is key for many types of free stores like outdoor sharing shelves. Some stores create curtains out of salvaged plastic or shower curtains that can easily open, close, and hang from a steel wire cable. Bring some creative minds from your team together to figure out the best plan for your store.

Decide and communicate accepted items.

Think about what you’d like to see exchanged and what you have enough space, resources, and volunteers to accommodate. Clothing? Kitchenware? Jewelry? Books? Tools? Food? All of the above? Think it through and remember, it can always evolve! Starting small can be beneficial. 

For example, while clothing and food may be some of the most practical items for folks in need, they may require more space, maintenance, and daily attention than you and your team can handle as part of a 24/7 free store.

Stock the store.

Once word is out, those shelves will fill and empty incessantly! Sadly, there is no lack of items being tossed out by stores, offices, and neighbors. If made easy enough, people love donating instead of dumping. 

• Purge your own excess and invite friends, neighbors, organizations, and businesses to do the same.
• Monitor and glean from the local residential and commercial trash. The end of the month often means move-outs. And don’t forget about the end of the school year too.
• Thrift shops discard more than you can imagine. You can try to make formal arrangements with them or find items ready for taking.
• Put out a call for specific items you know community members need, like menstrual products.
• Go to garage sales when they close and offer to take everything they have been unable to sell.

Build and embrace a solid team. 

Teams will vary depending on whether you are part of an existing group (mutual aid, block association, anarchist collective, etc.) or are an individual in a community ready to start something new. Volunteers are key. But fear not—if you build it, even yourself, they will come. 

• If you just want to get a 24/7 shelf up yourself to see how it will evolve organically (it will!), that is awesome. Just remember that maintenance, cleanliness, and good signage all take time and energy and happen much more quickly with more people. Burnout is real and a solid team is critical for community initiatives.
• Pitch your idea and hold an initial meeting to see who wants to help get it off the ground. Getting buy-in and having people feel vested can give the project momentum.
• Mutual aid groups, community fridge projects, block associations, and neighborhood groups like Buy Nothing on Facebook and Next Door are some good potential partners.
• Engage your visitors and empower every one of them to be part of the team. Everyone is a steward of the space. 

Have a clear path for folks to get involved.

This could be a form to complete, an email address to write to, and a way to be added to a WhatsApp or other group communication.

Volunteers are critical.

• For larger-scale free stores, including brick-and-mortar free stores, creating a volunteer schedule can be helpful. In addition to the larger, critical group of volunteers who want to pitch in whenever they can, knowing you have two or three scheduled volunteers a day, particularly when launching, will both help things run smoothly and will also demonstrate to neighbors and building owners that this is a well-stewarded neighborhood initiative.
• Remember that volunteers may come and go, and people do what they can when they can. Support from the community will continue to build organically.
• Create systems for volunteers to communicate easily (e.g a WhatsApp thread for check-ins). This not only provides real-time updates to what’s happening at the store, it builds camaraderie and community and even offers a sneak peak at what might be found on the shelves!
• There can be many volunteer roles, ranging from social media manager to volunteer coordinator to graphics designer and everything in between. Some of the most important roles are monitors, stewards, and curators—the folks who ensure the store is only stocked with accepted items and everything is tidy. 
• Share appreciation! A successful free store could only happen with the contributions (not just material items) of many!

Ensure the free store is open and welcoming to all.

• Remember that you have created an open community space, which means it should be open and welcoming to ALL. A free store is a space for everyone to give and take, both concrete items and ideas, stories, volunteerism, and more. Neighborhood-sharing hubs create a beautiful setting for neighbors to come together as equals. 
• Encourage conversation and an openness to all of the possibilities for what might be attained at the free store! Empathy, compassion, and respect are at the core. 
• Keep the space clean, tidy, and organized. This is instrumental for keeping building owners and neighbors okay with your free store, which might feel ludicrous or even frightening to them (remember, much of our society is mystified by this concept).

Institute clear guidelines and systems.

Once you have determined what your space and resources can accommodate, you will need to ensure permanent signage at the space and, ideally, clear messaging on social media, too.

Communicate clearly.

Clear signage and publicity are critical, on-site, online, and on the tip of everyone’s tongues. Make sure guidelines are adhered to, and don’t allow exceptions. It can be a slippery slope! For example, if you don’t accept clothing but people start to see clothing items, more people will start to bring clothing, too. If making a change, like to hours or acceptable items, for example, change the signage and let the public know!

Best practices for signage

• List what is accepted and not accepted
• Be as clear as possible
• Have the signs in more than one place
• Signs should be in multiple languages, depending on your neighborhood composition (Please note word gets out about free stores, and people will come from other neighborhoods, too.)
• Make it clear if your space doesn’t allow items to be left on the sidewalk
• Signs should also express what the store is about, i.e. “Take what you need. Leave what you can for others who may need it.”
• Depending on your location, it might be important to have large, clear signs reminding people not to leave large things like furniture and mattresses. When people start to dump larger items like those, you will likely run into problems with building owners and your local sanitation department.
• Have clear signage for how people can get involved and become a volunteer.
• List your email, social media page(s), and other relevant info. 

Maintenance

• Upon launching, make sure you or others can regularly check on the free store to keep it tidy, ensure guidelines are being followed, and engage neighbors.
• A daily schedule of at least 2-3 site checks is ideal. You will also have many volunteers who aren’t officially on your list. Lots of people love to give the free stores love!
• Have efficient communication systems for volunteers. WhatsApp threads or Slack (depending on your volunteers’ tech access) can work well. Sharing photos for each check-in helps in many ways—including indicating that something has been lingering, occupying precious space for several days, and could/should be moved out.
• Building a roster of volunteers indicating interests, skills, or resources is helpful. 
• Create a guide for volunteers and onboard them in person.

Plan for excess. 

• If items have been sitting in the store for several days, they would likely continue to linger and should be removed to keep the store dynamic and space-optimized.
• Volunteer stewards should know the local neighborhood pantries, shelters, thrift stores, and other venues that accept items, as well as online resources like Buy Nothing groups, Freecycle, and social media pages like Stooping.
  
• By having a WhatsApp group or other form of communication for volunteers, someone can call for help to deal with large or unaccepted items.

Spread the word. 

Publicity will happen organically from people passing by the free store. You might even get media attention without any effort. This might be enough and all that you have capacity for—that’s fine, even great! But for larger scale initiatives, you want to get accurate messaging out far and wide. Reach out to community groups like block associations, mutual aid groups, housing rights organizations, social service organizations, elected officials, libraries, and more to see if they can help get the word out.

Create a dedicated email address and a social media page. 

• Think about your capacity upon set-up. You can always grow and add more. Linktree is a quick, easy, and free way to access all of your important information and documents online.
• Share the store location and guidelines in neighborhood social media pages like Facebook Buy Nothing groups, Next Door applications, and elsewhere.
  Keep at least one social media platform regularly updated if you can (Instagram seems to be working well for many free stores). You can include reminders about guidelines, post useful and fun things found at the store, and more. 

Flyer around your community.

Post about the store (including what is and isn’t accepted) around the neighborhood.

Additional tips

• Infusing the space with positive energy is key, especially in bigger cities with a lot of foot traffic! Free stores are also community centers for exchanges of resources, ideas, stories, and good energy. 
• Defensiveness will push folks away, not lead them in. You want more people around, so be friendly, informative, and optimistic about the impact your free store will have in your community.
• Community bulletin boards for sharing resources and information go great with sharing shelves.
• Don’t try to control everything. Spoiler alert: You can’t.
• Be emotionally prepared for the free store to be shut down–or for it to thrive and take off with community support!
• Trust life, the process, and yourself and your community members.

Remember, if you build it, they will come! We can’t wait to hear about the new free store in your community.

Editor’s note: A version of this guide was originally published by Eating in Public on August 2, 2022, and updated on November 26, 2024.

Check out these related articles:

• How to create a little free community pantry or fridge
• 5 free apps to swap, share and sell your extra stuff
• How to start and participate in a Buy Nothing group
• Free radicals: Sharing as political organizing

The post How to start a free store in your community appeared first on Shareable.

Precious Plastic has developed a scalable DIY recycling model that reconceives plastic waste as a precious resource. Founded by Dutch inventor Dave Hakkens, Precious Plastic offers an open-source template for constructing micro-plastic factories so people around the world can help clean up local neighborhoods and start their own businesses as plastic crafters. The site has step-by-step videos and technical drawings to guide people through collecting plastic waste, shredding it and refabricating it into useful items.

How big is the plastic garbage problem?

Plastic, predominantly made from oil, never goes away. It is a durable material made to last forever, yet 33 percent of it is used once and discarded. According to the Plastic Pollution Coalition, by 2050, the world’s oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight. It is estimated that only 9 percent of all plastic ever made has been recycled, and last year China, which had been accepting our recyclable plastic waste, stopped taking it.

Plastic recycling for the people

Hakkens’ disdain for waste drove him to develop the concept for Precious Plastic as a design school graduation project in 2013 and has since grown into a global community of 104,000 people. Hakken developed a set of replicable machines for recycling that can be constructed from basic materials and housed in affordable spaces like shipping containers. The enterprise shares the blueprints on PreciousPlastic.com so they can be downloaded, upgraded and used for free under a Creative Commons license.

The directions and process are straightforward and easy to understand. The machines include a plastic shredder, extruder, injection molder, and rotation molder. All can be built with components that are affordable, and easy to find, repair, replace and customize worldwide.

The website has a map highlighting recycling heroes around the globe working on inspiring experiments, quality eco-effective products, beach rescues and social enterprise projects such as one in Sri Lanka, where local women create products for tourists to buy.
Precious Plastic’s online bazaar showcases the array of products that can be made including phone cases, flowerpots, skateboards, clipboards, art, building supplies, clocks, jewelry and more, all from discarded plastic.

While plastic products continue to be cheaply mass-produced in huge quantities, Precious Plastic’s shareable model is a cultural tool to confront this ecological disaster. Its vast network and evolving site empower us to join a global army aimed at reclaiming waste and changing the way society perceives plastic.

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Also take a look at how one the island of Zlarin is ditching single-use plastics altogether.

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How did Earth Matter get started?

Kendall Morrison, Charlie Bayrer and I co-founded Earth Matter back in 2009, but our journey started around four years before that when we were part of the Fort Greene Compost Project. This volunteer-led effort set out to capture residential food waste and turn it into compost for use in five community gardens.

Over the next few years, the volume of food scraps we collected and the number of people participating in the project snowballed, and a local nonprofit called GrowNYC was able to secure some funding to pilot the Fort Greene model more expansively. It soon became clear that we needed a larger-scale processing site.

We incorporated Earth Matter in time to host our first zero-waste event as part of the annual City of Water Day on Governors Island in July 2009. We recognized that the island — a vast 172 acres in New York Harbor — would be the ideal home for a closed-loop compost processing system and an educational nonprofit. By the next year, we had launched our compost learning center and become an official program partner with the Trust for Governors Island.

What kind of activities is Earth Matter involved with now?

As part of our compost operation, we process scraps collected from residents across Manhattan and Brooklyn through the NYC Department of Sanitation compost and food scrap recovery programs. Some of the waste collection sites now include staffing and offer a 24-hour service. Our capacity has significantly increased since we started: In 2011, we processed 5,000 lbs of waste, whereas last year, we handled 500,000 lbs.

Our volunteers run zero-waste stations at a variety of large-scale events on Governors Island, such as the annual Jazz Age Lawn Party, which helps to build public awareness and excitement around composting. We’re also proud to have helped the Trust for Governors Island go zero-waste. When securing contracts with vendors and festival organizers, zero-waste guidelines are now built in from the beginning. This year, we’re launching a buyer’s collective for vendors to bulk purchase compostable serviceware like plates, bowls, and cutlery too.

What does neighborhood participation look like and why is it important?

We provide as many opportunities as possible for our NYC neighbors to ask questions and learn about zero-waste living through our compost learning center and public events program. We aim to inspire people to adopt these practices as part of their lifestyles. Whether it’s saying no to plastic straws, rescuing food scraps or launching composting projects of their own, we know community engagement can have a considerable ripple effect when it comes to decreasing waste and contamination. Our neighbors spread the values of Earth Matter through their actions and choices.

Education is core to our mission as an organization, so everything we do is informed by that, and all of our volunteer roles are part of our overall educational model. Volunteers are involved in all aspects of our organization, and we work with around 15,000 of them each year. They care for animals, run zero-waste stations at events, remove contaminants like plastics from the compost mix, use carpentry skills to build and repair parts of our systems, and just about anything else you can think of.

Which features of the learning center are most popular?

Since 2010, we’ve incorporated farm animals in the learning center to showcase all parts of the composting cycle. We started with worms, then expanded to chickens, goats, and rabbits. Everyone — whether young or old — likes spending time with the animals.

Families seem to love trying out weird and wonderful composting methods like pickle barrel tumblers, ‘stop, chop and drop’ bins, and worm banks. Many people begin diverting their own food scraps from landfill by starting a worm bin at home or bringing their organic waste to neighborhood drop-off points after visiting us.

We also get rave reviews for our adult farm apprenticeship program. This teaches practical skills like crop planning, irrigation, harvesting, and tool usage for operating a small-scale urban farm. And, of course, the finished compost brings a lot of joy to the Earth Matter community. Some of us like to call it “black gold.”

What role does knowledge-sharing play in your organization?

Right now, we provide training to more than 45 different community groups, helping their members learn about the composting process and get some hands-on experience making compost. Our lessons can involve everything from building compost windrows to emptying food scrap bins to removing contaminants from the mix.

We love sharing our knowledge and learning from other groups and organizations, so we are always open to conversations and collaborations with anyone involved in closed-loop, reduction, reuse, and recycling projects. We’re currently working with Circular City, a collaborative festival, to get New Yorkers engaged with the ideas of the circular economy. This May, we’ll also host a daylong training program at The National Cultivating Community Composting Forum.

What advice would you give to others building community projects?

Resilience and adaptability are important qualities to help you overcome challenges and make changes where necessary. For example, development on Governors Island has meant we had to move the physical location of our entire operation more than once!

Seek people who have “can-do” attitudes too. Our small staff and volunteer teams are amazing at tackling whatever environmental or logistical challenges come our way. Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of like-minded people in making change happen. If you bring positive and earnest groups of people together in a shared mission, everything else will follow.

Visit the Earth Matter website to learn more about how you can get involved.

The post Composting in NYC: Q&A with Earth Matter founding director Marisa DeDominicis appeared first on Shareable.

Organizing a swap or free store can bring the same good fortune to whole communities. Clothing, kitchenware, games, books, plants, and nearly anything else can find new homes. In this age of disposability, it boggles my mind knowing how many items in decent or sometimes even perfect shape end up in landfills. Swaps are win-wins for all. One person’s trash becomes another’s treasure. Someone purges abundance and someone else extends the life of what’s been discarded, diverting it from landfill. Since 2017, I’ve been organizing Swap, Share, and Shmooze events in my Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in New York City. These events are a great way to not only swap stuff, but also share skills and form friendships.

Here are some tips for organizing your own swap or free store:

Step 1: Decide on participants. A group of friends? A whole neighborhood? An organization? They all work well. Small swaps with friends can be fun and intimate, where everyone is comfortable trying on clothing. Public events can turn up all sorts of mystery treasures.

Step 2: Secure a location. The ideas are endless: You can host a swap in in your living room, a bar, a park, a community center, a classroom, or really anywhere. Proper space can determine an event’s success. Some questions to ask: Is it large enough — is there ample space to lay things out visibly and to accommodate the number of people you expect? If it’s a public event, is it accessible to everyone? I’ve been to living room swaps where giant piles of clothing take up a whole couch, making it challenging to find things. The Swap, Share and Shmooze public event I organize takes place in a neighborhood church and has several large round tables, ideal for separating items by type.

Step 3: Determine the focus. What do you want to swap? Clothing? Kitchenware? Costumes? Jewelry? Hats? Books? Tools? All of the above? Swaps and free stores can work for anything. Decide what your focus will be, based on your space and community.  Make sure your publicity is clear.

Step 4: Spread the word. Email and social media outreach can be great, especially if your swap is with friends or through an existing group. For a neighborhood event, get those paper signs to cafes, libraries, and basically anywhere there’s a bulletin board. You can get in touch with local block associations, community boards, and elected officials too.

Step 5: Choose your model. Before everyone appears with giant bags, make sure you have a plan in mind or chaos will ensue. I’ve been to apartment swaps featuring a show-and-tell of each item before it’s placed in a specified area.  At our Swap, Share and Shmooze, we put signs on each table and have everyone place their own items before shopping. Volunteers help facilitate this process. We also set up a potluck snack table and one for business cards, flyers, and other materials.

Step 6: Organize a pick-up for leftovers. Even the most successful events will have unclaimed items. For small, home-based swaps, it might be easy to bring remaining items to a local shelter or thrift shop. For our larger scale events, we pre-arrange a pick-up by the United War Veterans Council or similar nonprofit organizations.

Step 7: Keep things organized. For large-scale events, collaborate with others to keep things structured and set the tone for positivity. You may even want to post ground rules. We’ve never done so but I once saw a pretty awful tug-of-war at an outdoor free store. At one of the yearly apartment swaps I go to, before officially claiming something, the item must be held up to see if anyone else is also interested. It always works out peacefully. Have your system in mind and communicate it clearly.

Step 8: Have fun, feel good, take photos, and model your finds. For clothing swaps, it is good to have mirrors available. At any event, it is important to have at least some seating. Providing drinks and snacks is a good idea, though not always necessary.

For extra credit: Host a craft and fix-it night immediately following your swap. We plan on partnering with the Fixers Collective after our next Swap, Share and Shmooze. The plan is for guests to bring broken items, toolboxes, sewing kits, and most importantly, their imaginations. Together we’ll tinker and create new lives for what might otherwise become trash.

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