“I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna be fighting climate change one babygrow at a time’”

The Swapsies Inchicore WhatsApp group is almost always busy, generating a steady stream of notifications.

“Six pairs of shorts, 1 pair of joggers and 1 pair of cargo pants alleged 2-3 ftg [free to go] Emmet road,” someone posted recently, including a photo of the clothing.

“Me please” another member of the group quickly responded, grabbing them first.

Other recent offers include a 17” flat-screen Philips TV and a small collection of French and Irish children’s books.

People also post requests for items they are “in search of”. “ISO a wand. The sparklier the better,” someone wrote recently.

The group, which started in 2018, is a way to try to make sure that stuff that’s still useable keeps getting used, rather than being thrown in the bin, says Kristiana Mindere.

“My idea for setting this up – and where I got the idea from was obviously kind of environmental groups or like zero-waste groups – so I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna be fighting climate change one babygrow at a time,” she says, laughing.

It’s also a nice way to help people save money. “I know for sure that people who may have been struggling, this has helped them a lot as well on that kind of, you know, financial side,” she says.

The group is an example of “the circular economy” – basically reusing stuff instead of binning it, or recycling it. There are others like it in the city, often set up as Facebook groups, including ones in Glasnevin and Drumcondra.

“We’re seeing more and more of these,” says Claire Downey, policy and research director at the Rediscovery Centre, the National Centre for the Circular Economy, in Ballymun.

A community effort

It’s Friday, just after lunchtime, and Mindere is sitting at a table in the living room of her home in Inchicore, facing her front window – and, beyond it, the Grand Canal.

Little scooters, helmets and shoes sit by the front door. A floor lamp she says she got off the Swapsies group stands nearby.

Mindere says she spun the Swapsies group off from a longer-standing WhatsApp group for local mums. It now has seven admins, and 386 members.

“It’s a community effort, so I’m kind of feeling funny to be representing it,” she says.

The inspiration was the amount of stuff that children use briefly and then grow out of.

“The main main sort of point was like, children’s items, but to be honest, there has been anything swapped in it,” she says. “Like, I’ve gotten a dishwasher out of it. Gave away a sofa.”

Yes, most of the items given away through the group could probably have been sold online instead, Mindere says.

“But I think this is the whole community mindset in it [the group],” she says. “That people want to give this to their friend or their neighbor or whatever, you know, it’s like I don’t need 10 euro for this – you will have use out of it and that’s good enough.”

The guidelines for the group say “giving away, swapping and selling is all permitted, though we try to keep the bulk of items FREE”.”

And people do sell things on it sometimes. “Brand new Christmas cards, crafts and decorations! €30 for the lot – Drimnagh”, a recent post with a photo says.

But, mostly, it’s people giving away things, and meeting each other when they pick them up or drop them off.

“People, I think they find quite a few sort of things in the group, as well, like, it’s a community, I know there’s friendships that have come out of this as well,” Mindere says.

Sorcha Nic Mhathúna, another one of the admins, says she met someone who’s now a close friend through the Swapsies group.

“I put up some cot sheets (had bought the wrong size) a few weeks before my first was born,” Nic Mhathúna says. “She was at the same stage and we had a good chat at the doorstep and now our boys have grown up together.”

Multiplying

Some former members of the Swapsies Inchicore group have moved to other areas and set up similar groups there, say Nic Mhathúna and Mindere.

“It’s kind of like, you get the one seed and then it kind of like, you know, spreads elsewhere as well,” Mindere says.

The main challenge is to build a community that’s interested and engaged with the project so the group will be active and useful, she says.

For Swapsies Inchicore, that was easy, because it spun off of an existing group of local mums, many of whom were already interested in this kind of effort, she says.

“I suppose if you were in a place and you’ve just moved somewhere and you might not have a community like that, where do you find these people?” she says.

Other tips? “You do need more than one admin to administrate it,” she says.

Also, early on it’s good to write a set of guidelines and etiquette for the group, Mindere says, so people know what’s expected.

The first item on the Swapsies Inchicore group’s guidelines begins: “Be kind. This group is about community and fun.”

Downey, at the Rediscovery Centre, says that having closed local groups like the Swapsies group helps ensure that the quality of what people put up is decent – because people know each other.

Otherwise, quality can be a problem, especially with electronic items, she said.

From buying to ISO-ing

Mindere says one of the things she’s really enjoyed about the group is seeing more people use it to find things they want, and other people have.

It shows people developing a mindset of not only avoiding binning, but avoiding buying, she says.

One of her favourite Swapsies asks was when someone went on the group looking for a very specific little part for a stroller.

“And they were like, oh, by any chance does somebody have this and somebody did have it! Like a match made in Heaven,” she says.

“I think there’s kind of like, things all the time when the timing is perfect, when somebody’s needed something very specific,” she says. “You know, I think those are the best moments and when that happens it’s quite nice.”

No one on the group had come through yet with a sparkly wand as of 1o.30pm Tuesday. It might still happen though.