Blurring the boundaries: Prosumption, circularity and online sustainable consumption through Freecycle

This article explores the digital exchange and moral ordering of sustainable and ethical consumption in online Freecycle groups. Through interactive exchanges in digital (online posts) and material (consumer items) modes, Freecycling blurs three common binaries in analyses of consumption: (1) consumption/production, (2) digital/material and (3) mainstream/alternative. Drawing on Ritzer's notion of 'implosions' as well as practice theory, I show that Freecycling practices reimagine and reproduce both products and consumers, practising prosumption through mixed digital and material practices in a performative economy, and how mainstream and alternative ways of consuming are entangled in pursuit of more sustainable, ethical consumption. This challenges us to think beyond these traditional binaries and to conceptualise a more blurred, less analytically clean and more circular approach to studying consumption.

Sustainable consumption, ethical consumption, digital consumption, prosumption, practices, recycling

When we upgraded our 12-year-old analogue television to a digital one a few years ago, the retailer refused to recycle it; rather than send the old set to the local authority dump, I joined two local 'Freecycle' groups to offer it to members for free. Within 2 days, someone drove to my house in northern England to collect it and told me that she intended to ship it to her mother in the Gambia. I also began

First, there is the blurring or implosion of consumption and production, what has been termed 'prosumption' (e.g. Currah, 2003; Ritzer, 2014; Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010; Zwick et al., 2008). Examples include consumers doing work previously done by paid employees in self-service restaurants and supermarkets, such as clearing tables and selecting food. In digital worlds, prosumption includes consumers and producers co-creating value for products through self-generated content (what Castells (2010) calls 'mass self-communication'), such as videos posted for free consumption or paid for by adverts and consumer reviews of music, film and books written on retailer sites for free. Because of these multiple examples, Ritzer (2014) refers to the Internet as the natural 'home' of prosumption today (p. 11). He also weighs up whether we can interpret prosumption theoretically as 'the eternal return of the same, a revolutionary new development, or... continuous with earlier developments' before concluding that it is all three, being

'simultaneously, something that is primal, ancient, recent, new, and even revolutionary' (pp. 18–19). As I shall show, Freecycling is trying to do something new to challenge existing cultures of consumption, but also often falls back into traditional repertoires of meaning and valuing.

Analyses of digital prosumption have also shown how people buy and sell things in cybermalls like eBay or virtual worlds like Second Life (Dene gri-Knott and Molesworth, 2010a, 2010b; Reisch, 2001; Ritzer, 1999). But there has been little attention paid to how things are exchanged and transformed, such as the use of eBay for divestment instead of purchase. In Freecycling, items are exchanged and transformed as users interactively and collectively shift items across moral registers, from 'unwanted' to 'Wanted', from 'bads' to 'goods'. Hence, rather than consumers merely responding to a commercial retailer's 'offer' (which is now a common phrase for products and services more generally), Freecycle encourages consumers to design and post their own desires, even if these often seem unrealistic, and also for items to be repaired and their use reimagined, turning the consumer of the original item into a prosumer of a reused, recirculated item.

As well as reimagining items, digital communication enables users to reimagine themselves too, to present their personalities and desires in diverse ways and to perform multiple subjectivities. Facebook offers 'public witnessing' (Miller, 2011: 180) of how the self is presented through the pictures posted or the jokes or groups that the user chooses to 'Like'. Dene gri-Knott and Molesworth (2010a) note that digital virtual consumption offers possibilities for experimenting with oneself and with commodities, such as reimagining subjectivities through creating a new online self of a different gender or imaginary persona (e.g. a wizard).

Hence, digital prosumption offers ways to collectively produce, change and reproduce moral ordering through (culturally mediated) interaction. Commodities are commodified (for purchase), then 'decommodified' (through use and personalisation) and sometimes may be 'recommodified' or 'recontextualised' (for resale) 'through a series of moments, of which exchange for money is just one' (Sayer, 2003, p. 346). In the case of divestment in particular, the implicit linearity and one-way directionality in typical analyses of commodity chains that end with disposal can be reimagined through circularity, with waste being reused, recycled and reinvented as other products, comparable to ideas of 'industrial symbiosis', 'industrial ecology' and 'closing the loop' of manufacturing/disposal (e.g. Jackson, 1996). Thus, in a study of e-waste, Lepawsky and Mather (2011) 'kept finding "value," not "waste"' as things/materialities moved into and out of the category of 'valueless' (p. 247).

In Freecycling, this idea of (re-)imagining goods and morally reordering their values takes place through diverse practices, practices that are shared and circular and therefore best analysed as 'prosumptive', rather than merely productive or consumptive, because 'production and consumption are sub-types of prosumption; it is prosumption that is the more general process that subsumes the other two' (Ritzer, 2014: 11). Items are repackaged, redesigned and handed over to new users. For example, items on 'Offer' may be broken or at least without value to the

current owner, perhaps because of insufficient repair skills or storage space, but presented as potentially working and of value for a future owner:

OFFERED: 4 Very Unloved kids bikes . . . very battered, unusable kids bikes on offer, maybe suitable for someone wishing to undertake a major project. All will need new tyres, brakes, and a good scrub . . . Please only ask if you are sure you want these bikes and understand they are in a mess!³

Balloon back chair needing repair Pretty Victorian balloon back chair with missing seat and damaged back support – good project for someone who knows what they are doing!

This parallels the household DIY 'project' through which skill/competence/knowledge is distributed not merely between people but between people and things (e.g. DIY tools) so that 'products and practices co-evolve' (Watson and Shove, 2008: 85). But in Freecycling, products move in order to evolve, to undergo moral reordering by the skills of members. Items are plastic, capable of reinvention and re-valuation through circular consumption, being shifted from 'unwanted' to 'wanted' registers, or reimagined to suit a new task or setting: virtual and material practices are intimately entangled. As prosumers, Freecyclers (re)configure their own (unwanted, outgrown, used and unused) possessions as useful for others, co-creating value by bringing together production and consumption.⁴ This co-creation or co-construction is performed between the 'offerer' and the 'taker', often by explicitly challenging other Freecyclers to reinvent items:

OFFERED – SMALL DOUBLE TROLLEY on castors . . . 2 shelves, suitable for a printer, small TV, or music centre . . . in fact use it for [whatever you will.

I have a small coffee table to offer. 23" square (59 cm × 59 cm) 24" High (60 cm) dark wood, but will paint to any colour if you want to.

I have a box of jewellery – plastic beads, earrings, hair slides and bands etc that are quite garish (cheap and nasty my mum would say . . .). Actually they're not that bad but would suit a little girl for dress up or fun.

In this way, consumption practices can be understood as prosumption practices, as 'the constant tinkering of consumers with consumer goods' involves not only repair but also reinvention, customisation and 'redefinition' in idiosyncratic ways (Graham and Thrift, 2007: 6). A Freecycler offered 'rubble' that could be useful as 'hardcore for a garden patio base', making one item into another not through material repair or physical modification but through reimagining a change of use – from broken paving slabs into a garden: 'I have lots of used bricks most have been cleaned and would [m]ake a great BBQ all so quite a bit of stone that would be good for a Rockery free to collect'.

Items are therefore not only 'stuff' but both raw material and product of consumers' imagination' (DeNegri-Knott and Molesworth, 2010b: 71), rendering some as 'blanks' upon or through which prosumers can construct value (Hetherington, 2004). Revaluing things, reordering them from 'unwanted' to 'wanted' and 'rescuing and resuscitating' goods (Gregson et al., 2007: 194) means that virtual posts also imagine items changing in the future. This leads us onto the second blurring of binaries.

In addition to blurring production and consumption, prosumption also mixes the virtual/digital and the material. The virtual space of Freecycle is thus literally made by consumers and producers, filled by them with content (descriptions and photos) and meaning (broken and valuable) through diverse practices of offering, giving, collecting and receiving. These circulate and co-create not only goods but also values through 'a space of flows' (Castells, 2010: 403) that link physical and imaginary worlds. This encourages us to understand 'virtual' consumption as not only purchasing material products online but also imagining products and practices of consumption more generally (e.g. when browsing on eBay or in a high street shop), rendering online practices more clearly as part of reimagining and redrawing what it means to be a consumer and doing this collectively in a publicly viewable online space.

In this way, Freecycle also reflects recent work in practice theory (e.g. Shove et al., 2007, 2012; Warde, 2005), in that such practices (1) are shared but not homogeneous; (2) are repeated; (3) are performative of everyday social life, of time and space and of present and future worlds, through that repeated enactment; and (4) can travel, especially through writings and rules, through learning and networking, both person-to-person and collectively online. And (5) practice theory suggests that, by repeated enactment, practices can become routine and increasingly difficult to challenge.

Applying this to Freecycle, we can see that digital technology enables users to link materials, meanings and skills – what Shove et al. (2012) refer to as 'elements of practice' – although in-person meetings to exchange products (and chat in the process) are also important. And in comparison with the hand-me-down economy (e.g. Gregson and Crewe, 2003), Freecycleers are not restricted to existing networks of friends and family or local charitable groups; instead, there may be thousands of other members in their Freecycle group, with some 'lurking' behind anonymous email addresses or only visiting the group briefly and sporadically when they have items to 'get rid of' rather than engaging regularly.

The fifth point in practice theory, routinisation, is especially important because it is a major obstacle to promoting sustainable and ethical consumption: if practices are routinised rather than clearly articulated (which is rare in everyday life), they become very difficult to unthink or to think about doing differently; people may not realise that they are doing them at all or, if they do, they may not realise

why they do them in particular ways. Many Freecyclers are motivated precisely by this challenge to rethink how people ordinarily consume; to reorder the morality of using, disposing to reusing, repairing and recycling; and to overturn traditional hierarchies of worth. One group's website said, 'Freecycle is an international grassroots environmental movement designed to minimise the amount of "stuff" we dump in our landfills. We do this by providing a forum for people to give their unused items to new, loving homes'.

But, as I have suggested already, this is less about simply giving things away and more about circulating things through wider networks. Rather than simply being handed on, things are not only transformed in this circular consumption, in terms of location, ownership and materiality (e.g. through being repaired by the receiver), but also transformed in terms of digital presence and how goods and practices are collectively imagined. In Freecycling, this circularity of digital and material exchange is often actively recognised and celebrated, where Freecyclers offer or request items for temporary ownership only, expecting to offer them round again on Freecycle when they are finished, for example:

polite request baby walker hi does anyone have a baby walker for my little girl no longer needed i can give it a good home and will re freecycle when finished with.

Offered: Another computer job lot more [PC] towers...motherboards/power supplies...other bits and pieces TAKE THE LOT...NO PICKING! Freecycle what you can't use!

OFFERED – Electric cooker this is a free standing 4 hob cooker with separate grill. It is old but works perfectly, got this from another fellow freecycler about a year ago and have finally got round to upgrading so thought it would be a shame for it not to get re-freecycled.

This takes us towards the third blurring, that is, the mainstream and alternative ways of doing things and the roles of ethics and morality. Digital consumption research (e.g. Denegri-Knott and Molesworth, 2010a) has not only focussed on consumers buying virtual commodities in virtual reality games like 'Second Life' but also suggested that digital sites are 'new means of consumption' because they may democratise consumption (and production), by resisting the pressures of mainstream consumer society (Ritzer, 1999) and offering new (and usually positive) ways in which consumption can be understood and configured across time and space. In this way, a virtual 'alternative' space for more ethical, sustainable, fair or otherwise valued consumption may be set up against the dominant mainstream spaces and practices.

Challenging mainstream practices and impacts is a key aim of the literatures on 'alternative' models of the economy, also termed 'diverse economies' (e.g. Gibson-Graham, 2006) or 'the solidarity economy' (Lemaître and Helmsing, 2012; Miller, 2006). These different rubrics cover a vast diversity of practices and organisations, from worker cooperatives in Brazil (Lemaître and Helmsing, 2012) to urban agriculture in Canada. These diverse projects share an emphasis on valuing labour (rather than alienating it), local grassroots developments, cooperative or self-management, a focus on community and subsistence needs and democratising decision making (Bauhardt, 2014).

However, most writing about 'the solidarity economy' is about practical projects, specifically their potential for social change and 'scaling up' their political organising into international networks (Miller, 2006), rather than theoretical analysis (Bauhardt, 2014: 62). However, some of its ideas, such as shared values, can still be applied to Freecycling consumption practices. For example, the idea of developing into a social movement was mentioned by one Freecycle group on their login webpage (see above), but it was rarely evident in online posts. The solidarity economy's principle of reciprocity across the community was also evident where people posted both 'Offered' and 'Wanted' items, thus both giving to and taking from their Freecycle group. Giving was also cast in a non-hierarchical way, as a sensible alternative to the rubbish bin, rather than a philanthropic or top-down gesture of charity to those less wealthy, again echoing ideas from the solidarity economy. However, because being active in Freecycling rarely builds 'social relationships', not least because of the relative anonymity of Internet interactions, Freecycling does not really fulfil that condition of 'the solidarity economy' ideal.

Similarly, the wide literature on 'alternative' consumption emphasises that it takes many names, including ethical consumption, political consumption (Micheletti, 2003), sustainable consumption (Pecoraro and Uusitalo, 2014) and fair trade (Barnett et al., 2011). It also takes many forms, often conceptualised as individual consumers shrugging off the habits of mainstream consumerism as part of building their own identities at a micro-level, but can also be analysed at a more collective or macro-level as part of changing governance and sharing responsibility (Barnett et al., 2011; Micheletti, 2003) or as cultural processes across groups (Sahakian and Wilhite, 2014). However, this literature concentrates on conceptualising ethical consumption and its power relations, with the alternative economies literature concentrating more on production than consumption, with little work analysing how this supposed separation of the alternative from the mainstream works (or does not work) in practice. For example, very few consumers live purely alternative lives of voluntary simplicity: instead, sustainable consumption is threaded through with trade-offs, compromises and patching together very common and very uncommon styles of living and products.

The 'alternative' or 'diverse' economies literature also aims to challenge 'capitalocentrism' by opening up research agendas to analyse performative practices in particular (Gibson-Graham, 2008: 623). It is therefore important not to see Freecycling as some neatly compartmentalised and idealised 'alternative' economic

model which circulates around its own ethics and practices. Rather, it is one of many possible 'performative economies', shaped not through the dominant role of producers and retailers but through multiple, complex, incomplete and shifting knowledge practices. Following the practices of Freecycling, as I do in this article, shows that the ideals of alternative consumption are not pure and contained within so-called alternative networks, but are blurred across diverse practices.

For example, Nelson et al. (2007) posited Freecycling as part of a backlash against the demoralising values of hegemonic consumerism, that is, unethical, materialistic, hedonistic and self-interested consumption. This relies on an implicit binary between the mainstream and the alternative, where 'mainstream' stands for typically market-oriented spaces and practices and 'alternative' for supposedly more sustainable, less materialistic spaces and practices. In contrast, I would argue that Freecycling blurs this mainstream/alternative binary in an implosion of moral certainties: things are offered not for sale or even swapping or barter but for handing over, exchanging and gifting (one Freecycle group's webpage specifically refers to members 'gifting' items), and this is morally 'good', yet things are also asked for, often very desirable consumerist objects, such as laptop computers, smartphones and dishwashers.

This echoes ideals of reciprocity, for example, in models of alternative/solidarity economies, where reciprocity is based on social ties, especially in the local community, wherein those who receive gifts are also expected to give gifts, thus mixing 'altruism and self-interest' (Lemaître and Helmsing, 2012: 747).

As part of blurring mainstream and alternative consumption, Freecycle also blurs the binary between consuming and de-consuming, between getting things and getting rid of things. Disposal of post-consumer waste has been analysed in the last 10 years and increasingly shown to be integral to consumption (Hetherington, 2004: 158). To put it another way, how we de-consume deserves study just as much as how we consume, because each is a part of the other and because de-consuming shapes our social relations and material worlds, as well as affecting sustainability and ethical questions. Recent work addresses this by analysing disposal, de-consuming and what Gregson calls 'divestment' via municipal rubbish collection, recycling systems, charity or thrift shops and friends and family (Bulkeley and Gregson, 2009; Gregson and Crang, 2010; Gregson et al., 2007).

OFFERED: Canon i70 laptop printer for parts or repair Great laptop printer in a compact, easily portable size you can't find readily any more. All cables, manuals, CD, even extra cartridges and box included... Only catch: it doesn't work, and it's not

a non-techie fix. If you know anything about replacing waste ink reservoirs or are willing to learn, the whole package is all yours.

Despite seeming unattractive, this item was reported online as 'Taken' later the same day. Thus, Freecycling facilitates not merely the donation of goods but also the demand for goods – the explicit 'wish lists' seen online in many review sites like Amazon are in Freecycle often materialised through donation. And this includes 'high-tech' items like printers as well as 'low-tech' items like wooden chairs – there is no clear distinction here. 'Hand-me-downs' are thus actively created, rather than passively received, becoming in this sense more like new goods than old stuff. Perhaps more surprising to those outside Freecycle is how often 'Wanted' posts ask for items that are broken or can be broken:

ANYBODY HAVE ANY BROKEN WATCH BITS . . . ? that they no longer want or need . . . I can use them.

Wanted, a garden shed, or bits of one, for our allotment. Condition does not matter at all so long as it is repairable and can be made usable. We can take it down and clear everything away for you.

This visibility of online demand even for recognisably broken or unwanted goods collapses a simplistic category of waste as 'post-consumption' and recirculates value through the 'hand-me-down' or 'hand-around' economy, emphasising the material donation of goods through known social networks and replacing 'linear trajectories' with 'open-ended webs of potential connectivity' (Gregson et al., 2007: 198). Second-hand consumption challenges the assumption of a throwaway society, of the traditional and inevitable linear trajectory of goods from shops to homes to rubbish bins (Gregson and Crewe, 2003) and emphasises instead reusing, recycling and re-conceptualising goods in more sustainable ways.

Items on Freecycle are thus plastic, being reimagined through circulating consumption, shifting across moral registers from 'wanted' to 'unwanted', from 'bad' to 'good' and back again as diverse consumers purchase, handle, pass on and repair them. This 'moral economy' (Sayer, 2003) is also a circular economy; it enables repair and re-valuation where the worth of goods can be increased by looping through different practices, rather than a linear economy based on entropy where worth can only decline as goods move towards disposal. It also performs moral reordering as part of this circularity.

In addition to moral ordering of goods, Freecycling practises the moral ordering of people as consumers, reflecting also the digital construction of a different online persona mentioned above. Multiple representations of the 'good' consumer, or moral 'narratives of the self' (Barnett et al., 2011), are either directly expressed through the wording of Freecycle posts or are clearly implied. The most common is the frugal householder, who dislikes waste on principle and therefore offers even lowly and mundane items in the hope that someone (else) will value them and turn

de-consumption into re-consumption, mixing the pleasures of donation with the regret of disposal:

Offered: taps and bath panel I have 2 sets of brand new taps and brand new White plastic bath panel if anyone could use them. It would be a shame to throw them.

There is also the creative self, for example, the cook who says they will give a good home to kitchen items such as bread makers and pasta makers:

WANTED: Pasta maker/roller-thingie If anyone has one of those gadgets you roll out pasta dough with sitting gathering dust in a corner, I'd be delighted to take it off your hands. (Later posted as 'Received')

Other imagined selves are the low-income household (especially students), who beg sympathy for their plight and make themselves worthy recipients of goods; the sustainable consumer, who dislikes waste on environmental grounds; and the generous neighbour, who wants others to enjoy products that they have enjoyed. Thus, Freecycling allows consumers to reimagine and represent themselves (and others) as both consumer and producer, offerer and receiver, and benevolent and desirous, again echoing ideals of the solidarity economy through the principle of reciprocity across the community.

Similar re-enchantment (Ritzer, 1999) of mundane consumption has been identified through the excitement, pleasure and 'arousal' in the emotional experience created by the searching and bidding process on eBay (Denegri-Knott and Molesworth, 2010b). By comparison, Freecyclers seem to gain pleasure through consumption in multiple ways: first, there is the pleasure of generously giving; second, there is the pleasure of 'getting rid' of stuff; third, there is the pleasure of receiving things for free; and fourth, there is the pleasure of being part of a community, of making friends through chatting online and (more occasionally) swapping items. Some Freecyclers also post 'Wanted' requests on behalf of 'worthy' causes and charities, for example, a local hospice, school or playgroup, or construct 'worthy' recipients by describing friends or family members (for whom 'Wanted' requests are posted) as being on low incomes, single mothers, students or elderly. Others qualify 'Offer' posts by asking whether their unwanted items are going 'to a good home' or to someone who could not otherwise afford them.

Some of these pleasures echo the values of traditional consumerism, but others challenge them or at least complicate the relationship between having, wanting and refusing. So, both consuming and de-consuming (disposing) are pleasurable, challenging the notion that being thrifty, ethically sound and green mean sacrifice rather than fun. This reflects Soper's concept of 'alternative hedonism', where having less can itself be fun, even 'a distinctively moral form of self-pleasuring or a self-interested form of altruism: that which takes pleasure in committing to a more socially accountable mode of consuming' (Soper, 2007: 213). This blurs the familiar consumer/citizen dichotomy that often underlies criticisms of sustainable

consumption because it argues that self-interest can be fulfilled not by having more (or better or cheaper) things but by having (or doing) 'good' things. Here, the re-enchantment (Ritzer, 1999) of consumption is proposed to occur not through spectacle and extravagance but through thrift, reinvention and moralisation. So, even the purchase of ethical and environmental goods can be seen as pleasurable and even self-interested where it is used to claim status and virtue (Soper, 2007). Nelson et al. (2007) argued that US Freecyclers can be seen as downshifters, who are deliberately restyling their lives and their identities away from hedonistic consumption to simpler ways of living, again emphasising that having less may be constructed as a positive and pleasurable consumer choice.

But Freecycling also demonstrates hedonistic desires, with 'Wanted' posts often seeking materialistic goods, especially electronics, for free. Table 2 shows the types of goods in 'Offer' posts (thus 'unwanted') compared to 'Wanted' posts. Some 'Wanted' posts express traditionally consumerist desires, for example, for dish-washers, mobile phones, laptop computers, leather sofas, some even specifying that items should be working and in good condition. These are not people merely picking up the debris divested from other people's lives; rather, they are actively voicing their desires in a common consumerist register, such as seeking the latest computing and audiovisual equipment (prompted perhaps by the United Kingdom's move to digital broadcasting signals, mentioned in my opening vignette).

There are also morally 'bad' representations of the consumer, self-expressed or implied on Freecycle, such as the unskilled or lazy householder, who is incapable of fixing broken items (but hopes someone else can):

Offered I have a [jigsaw] puzzle[le in] 3d of tower bridge, looks quite hard we don't have time to do it but sure it would be great for someone. the contents have never been opened.

And there is frequent disgust and disapproval expressed also about time-wasters who do not collect items when they say they will, for example:

we have a trampoline for up to 3 yrs old if anyone wants it. (please only email me if you will call me to arrange collection after I email you my phone number i a have had lots of time wasters recently and would like to give my stuff to people who genuinely want it).

Another morally dubious self is the demanding materialist, who is (by implication) too hedonistic in posting unrealistic requests for too-desirable consumer goods. A particularly detailed example follows:

Wanted: Pine Bedside Cabinets and other bits ... Hi guys, ill just say thanks in advance to any offers I may receive, me and my partner are moving into our first flat on friday and needs a few bits of furniture really ... listed below, I know its a BIG favor to ask

All calculations by the author. Counts represent number of posts mentioning a category, not number of items offered. Ratio of offered:wanted posts is about 2:1.

but money is short and we could do with some things. Again, thanks in advance for whatever offers I may get! 1. Matching pair of pine or oak bedside cabinets, preferably the type with 3 drawers. 2. A brown leather or brown cloth 2 seat sofa 3. Some sort of chair to use in the bedroom, again preferably brown cloth or leather. 4. Some sort of DVD display cabinet with glass front maybe. Again, I know this is a HUGE thing to ask for but it would be ever so appreciated if anyone can help!

To support the morally worthy consumer, the virtual space of Freecycle is explicitly regulated by moderators as a non-commercial space; consuming is understood in the wider sense of using, rather than the narrower sense of shopping – there should be no purchase involved and no money changing hands. As on other online sites, this constructs ‘an experiential space that is actively produced and negotiated through both the discursive practices of its creators and the cognition of its surfers’ (Currah, 2003: 9, italics in original). Non-commercialisation⁵ is enforced through the explicit (n)etiquette of Freecycle groups that in principle means no trading, no offering money in ‘Wanted’ posts, no expecting payment in ‘Offered’ posts and no begging for cash. Moderators repeatedly post reminders about these rules, for example:

Please don't advertise anything which you expect to get money for, and please don't use this list to advertise events... NO POLITICS, NO SPAM, NO MONEY, NO PERSONAL ATTACKS/RUDENESS. Two strikes & you're out, i.e. you will be unsubscribed by the moderator after two inappropriate postings.

items for sale, borrowed or swapped are not permitted on freecycle, anyone who does not stick to the rules will be given a warning and if they continue to break the rules will be removed from freecycle.

These principles are often reinforced in posts by members, who try to prevent this non-commercial concept of Freecycle being undermined by traders getting stuff for free and then selling it for profit, quite possibly elsewhere online, for example, through eBay. In the following example, the possession (consumption) of expensive consumer items is used as a signifier of being ‘unworthy’ to receive even unwanted items on Freecycle:

OFFERED – Cane Chair & 2 seater settee... Anyone who claims poverty but sends messages from a blackberry or i-phone will not be considered. Anyone who turns up in a white van with Thomson's auctioneers tickets strewn across the floor will be turned away. In other words NO DEALERS!!!!!!!

Moderators aim to regulate the virtual space of Freecycle to exclude such monetarisation – only material goods should change hands and circulate through consumption. This more radical interpretation of non-monetary consumption contrasts with the ‘second-hand cultures’ of Gregson and Crewe (2003), where

'retro retailing' in car boot sales, charity shops and vintage boutiques involves monetary exchange and therefore profit in a more traditional capitalist mode.

In studying 'offline' gift economies of hand-me-down and hand-made round objects, Gregson and Crewe (2003: 106) consider that their empirical evidence is only 'equivocal at best' about whether divestment and second-hand consumption practices are really alternative or reduce consumption overall: sometimes getting rid of stuff allows people more room to get more stuff. And even second-hand consumption still reflects and uses the practices and spaces of first-hand consumption, such as conventions of retail display, branding, profit-seeking and commodification as expressions of capitalist hegemony in modern society. Online practices of Freecycle groups demonstrate this very clearly when postings use 'mainstream' descriptions to revalue unwanted items in this supposedly sustainable, alternative space. For example, 'Offer' posts sometimes include a hyperlink to the original retailer of the offered item or one very like it:

Good quality cot bed. Suitable from birth to 5 years old. See link to the Argos website http://www.argos. co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3773420/c_1/1/category_root Nursery/14417537/c_2/2/14417537|Cots%2C+nursery+ +furniture+ +and+bedding|14417580/c_3/3|cat_14417580|Cots|14417587.htm. (Reported 'Taken' immediately: 'I was flooded with emails!')

Such posts invoke the repertoire (the direct visual and verbal vocabulary) of mainstream retailing, bringing it only one click away from the (supposedly) alternative exchange space. This blurs both digital/material and mainstream/alternative repertoires and emphasises that such distinctions are both inaccurate and analytically unhelpful. And in a further blurring of the divide between markets and non-markets, one Freecycle group's website also hosted sponsored links above the search engine boxes, for example, 'SPONSOR RESULTS: ConsumerSearch.com – Compare and Save Now – Read Our Reviews and Shop With Confidence[:j] shopping.yahoo.com – Outdoor Living Items at Yahoo!'

The only monetary exchange that moderators explicitly allow to follow from Freecycling is when revaluing, repairing and reinventing can turn something of no monetary value into something of monetary value, at which point members are 'allowed' (although, in practice, moderators have little control over what members actually do with items) to sell Freecycled items for money. So, money enters Freecycle's circular consumption only (ideally, that is) through the skill and labour of the consumer, who thereby becomes more explicitly a prosumer:

When requesting an item with a WANTED post, or when responding to another member's OFFERED post, please state whether you will be selling the item. In general, it is NOT all right to take an item for free just to sell it on ebay, at a flea market, or elsewhere. There are people who may truly and personally benefit from the item, and if it were going to be sold, the person offering it might have done so. When it's offered out of kindness, please do not abuse it.

However, there are some circumstances in which it might be acceptable for you to resell an item (i.e. you repair broken appliances and might be able to fix it up and resell it). If your situation might be something like this, please just state it in your request or when you email an offeror. If you are found to be reselling freecycle items without appropriately disclosing your intentions, you may be banned from the list.

Re-selling by charitable causes is another exception that is permitted on Freecycle, for example, '[Named] School PTA are holding a Jumble Sale this coming Saturday... and would love any of the following items to sell: Adult and children's clothing Books Toys and Games DVD's Bric-a-Brac'. By implication, people could have already considered or actively tried divesting their items through these marketed channels but only as a last resort turned to Freecycle, when items proved unworthy of re-selling:

Offered: Pelican history of England Volumes 4-8 with some duplicates and some other history related paperbacks – elderly but needing a loving and appreciative home – and no – they aren't worth anything on Amazon, Ebay etc. or I would have donated them to a charity!

And although 'money-making' is therefore explicitly forbidden on Freecycle, there is little political critique of capitalism expressed there, leaving only philanthropy and 'giving things a good home' as the implicit ideology for donation.

Freecycling is part of a long history of 'free' goods online; indeed, the origins of the Internet have been seen as a rejection of capitalistic accumulation, profit maximisation and materialism in favour of counter-cultural values of openness and sharing (e.g. of free software). Similar arguments have also been made about online consumption generally, as challenging mainstream hegemonic consumption practices. For example, Leyshon (2003) argued that Napster 'is certainly not a utopian alternative to capitalism, but is seen by some of its influential participants as a precursor to a more distributed, more efficient market economy, with a strong libertarian edge' (p. 553).

But in reality, Freecycling practices are far more blurred and 'the gift economy' model (perhaps surprisingly) does not fit well. First, Freecycling does not build social relationships on reciprocity – goods donated via Freecycle are alienable and transferable without reciprocity. Like peer-to-peer sharing of music online, it is more like mainstream markets than is often assumed in the alternative economies literature, because 'these communities are relatively impersonal and anonymous [and] these objects circulate more like quasi-commodities than like gifts' (Leyshon, 2003: 554).

Thus, Freecycling demonstrates that divisions between digital and material, between consumption and disposal, between mainstream and alternative consumption, between gift and commodity and between wanted and unwanted goods are in

practice blurred and continually remade by exchange between consumers. This is further enabled by online exchanges which allow consumers to reimagine their items (and themselves) in new ways and to redesign and re-market them for reuse, through the moral reordering of what it means to be a 'good' consumer or a 'good' item.

These diverse practices affect three implosions of key binaries: (1) consumption/production, (2) digital/material and (3) mainstream/alternative. Freecycling is, thus, prosumptive, rather than solely consumptive, and this prosumption is performed through digital and material practices of exchange and moral ordering. It is also circular, not only challenging the linearity of traditional perspectives on waste disposal but also pulling mainstream retailing and consuming vocabularies and representations into a supposedly alternative, ethically and environmentally driven space. I use 'circular consumption' to capture these non-linear, non-binary processes of revaluing and exchanging. This also resonates with practice theory because circular consumption emphasises the repeated enactment and interactions between things, skills (both virtual in the form of online postings and material in the form of repair) and people, and this collective circularity creates and re-creates value of/through things.

I have also cast Freecycling as an example of prosumption, as 'we will find it increasingly difficult to differentiate between production and consumption; between producers and consumers' in future (Ritzer, 2014: 19). This is particularly challenging because it requires us to integrate the often disparate literatures on sustainable consumption, digital consumption and practice theory and bring them to bear on the multi-faceted experience of recycling and exchanging goods online. It also means that we need to analyse sustainable consumption not only as hedonistic and pleasurable, as Soper suggested, but also as blurring the highly artificial dichotomy often posited between 'mainstream' and 'alternative' consumer practices. Instead, sustainable and ethical consumption is part of the bundling of consumption practices, in messy and overlapping ways, rather than a challenge to mainstream practices. The ongoing online engagement with diverse practices of designing, advertising and reimagining products through Freecycling is therefore a call to move beyond binaries and clearly defined spaces of different consumptive practices. Instead, we should follow the practices and goods themselves as they move through and help to construct social and cultural meanings and moral orderings, which then shape the materialities of how we use things today.

Thanks to Lewis Holloway for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Zwick D, Bonsu SK and Darmody A (2008) Putting consumers to work: 'Co-creation' and new marketing govern-mentality. Journal of Consumer Culture 8: 163–197.

Sally Eden is a professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at the University of Hull, UK. Her research analyses how people engage with environmental issues, especially through practices of sustainable consumption and environmental restoration. She has published work on the environmental certification of organic food, sustainably farmed fish and well managed forests, as well as on lay people's management of local rivers.