Freecycle

Probably the best known organisation for organised re-cycling and swapping is Freecycle:

http://www.freecycle.org

Freecycle describes itself like this:

"Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community"

Freegle

The organizers of Freecycle in the UK had a bit of a falling out with their US colleagues over how the UK operation should be run and have set up a new UK alternative to Freecycle:

http://www.ilovefreegle.org/

Freeconomy

The Freeconomy community, founded by Mark Boyle, (who featured here recently) aims to help people to share skills, tools and spaces in local communities:

http://www.justfortheloveofit.org/

LETS

Local Exchange Trading Schemes are springing up all over the country helping people to exchange goods and services locally without exchanging money.

The Letslink UK site has a map with links to all the local groups:

http://www.letslinkuk.net/regions/uk-map.htm

Swishing

The Swishing website helps you organise clothes swapping parties with friends:

http://www.swishing.org

Swap Books

Readitswapit lets you swap books online. All you have to pay for is the postage:

http://www.readitswapit.co.uk

Swapitshop

When you offer things to swap, swapitshop lets you collect swapit tokens that you can use to claim swaps from other people:

http://www.swapitshop.com/

Craigslist

Craigslist is still probably the ultimate place for swapping information and second hand items:

http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites

The site might not look that great, but it is incredibly widely used.

Here's how craigslist describes itself:

Q: What is craigslist?
A: Local classifieds and forums for more than 550 cities in over 50 countries worldwide - community moderated, and largely free.

Q: What can I find there?
A: Jobs, housing, goods, services, romance, local activities, advice - just about anything really.

Q: What is the origin of craigslist?
A: An email list of SF events, started as a hobby by Craig Newmark in early 1995.

Q: How much traffic does craigslist get?
A: More than 12 billion page views per month

You can even swap your house...

Have a look at:

http://www.ukhomeswap.co.uk/homeswap/

Bartercard

It's not just individuals who can swap things. Bartercard claims to be the biggest barter exchange scheme in the world for businesses:

http://uk.bartercard.com/

Skills Swapping

This is a very good article from the Guardian about the increasing prevalence of online skills swapping:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/nov/13/work-pay-bartering-skils

It seems the area which is doing best is people teaching each other languages, including the sites:

http://sharedtalk.com/

and:

http://lingofriends.com/

Observer: The Top 10 Swap Websites

This article in the Observer has some links to some other good swapping websites:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/01/top-10-swap-websites