Handling Specific Items

Freegle Volunteer Wiki › 📦 Handling Specific Items

This section answers one question a moderator keeps needing to ask: can this item be offered or requested on Freegle, and what should I watch out for? Freegle's baseline rule is that everything posted must be free, legal and appropriate for all ages - that's the hard line, and it's what rules out a handful of items completely, like asbestos, tasers and prescription medicines. Above that legal floor, a lot of these calls are local judgement rather than law: a group is free to add its own restrictions - on animals, alcohol, weapons or anything else its volunteers or members are uneasy about - even where the item itself would be perfectly legal to give away. The pages below go into the detail, reasoning, links and sample wording behind each ruling.

Weapons & dangerous items

• Archery equipment - bows and arrows are unrestricted; crossbows can only go to someone over 18.
• Fireworks - not allowed - giving them away outside a licence falls foul of firework supply law.
• Guns and replicas - licensed firearms can only pass between licence holders; realistic replicas are illegal outright; most groups adopt a blanket "no firearms" rule, air rifles included.
• Knives and Swords - kitchen and craft knives are allowed with care (over-18s only, handed over in person, wrapped); samurai swords are legally restricted and shouldn't be offered.
• Tasers and stun guns - not allowed - illegal to own in the UK outside narrow exceptions such as the police.

Medicines, drugs & controlled substances

• Alcohol and tobacco - local discretion; home-brewing kit is fine, distilling equipment isn't (needs an HMRC licence); vaping products are left to each group to decide.
• Contact Lenses - illegal to offer unless you're a qualified optician; lens solution is best treated as not allowed either, as it's classed as a medical product.
• Medicines and supplements - not allowed for human use in any category; most veterinary medicines are banned too (only over-the-counter AVM-GSL is fine); medical gases and oxygen are never allowed; supplements are a group judgement call.
• Worry words - explains the automatic ModTools flag that holds posts mentioning explosive precursors, drugs or medicines for a moderator to review.

Hazardous materials, chemicals & waste disposal

• Asbestos - not allowed - illegal to supply in any form, and a genuine health risk.
• Batteries - allowed - no legal issue, just a reminder about safe handling and disposal, especially for car and lithium batteries.
• Creosote - not allowed - illegal to sell or use domestically since 2003.
• Fire Extinguishers - allowed, except Halon models, which are illegal to own; suggest getting older ones checked.
• Garden chemicals: pesticides, insecticides, weedkiller - check against the RHS's list of withdrawn active ingredients; anything banned or out of date should be disposed of safely, not offered.
• Light Bulbs - halogen and fluorescent bulbs already in circulation can still be given away even though new sales are banned; dead bulbs are hazardous waste, not for Freegle.
• Scrap Metal - allowed; any waste-carrier registration requirement falls on the person collecting it as a business, not on Freegle or the group.
• Slug Pellets - not allowed - metaldehyde pellets are banned from sale and use because of the harm they do to wildlife.
• Thermometers - generally fine; older mercury ones count as hazardous waste if they're being disposed of rather than reused.
• Wood - allowed with care; never let CCA-treated or methyl-bromide-stamped pallets be burned, and blue CHEP pallets should go back to CHEP, not Freegle.

Fuel & oil

• Cooking Oil - allowed, including for use as biofuel; record-keeping and duty obligations fall on the person using it, not on Freegle.
• Oil - allowed; point members to the storage and duty-of-care rules if waste oil is being collected.
• Red Diesel - allowed - no licence needed to offer or request it.

Electrical & gas appliances

• Fridges and Freezers - fine if working; not allowed for scrap, since CFC/HCFC removal is legally required before disposal.
• Gas cylinders or bottles - often not yours to give away: many LPG cylinders remain the supplier's legal property and must go back to them, and as pressure vessels they need periodic testing.
• Gas cookers - allowed; worth a note that only a Gas Safe registered engineer can legally install or remove one.
• Scanners - allowed - legal to own and give away radio scanners.
• Sky and Virgin boxes - older, owned Sky boxes and dishes are fine; Sky Q boxes and viewing cards remain Sky's property and aren't allowed; Virgin's loaned cable boxes aren't allowed, but bought freeview boxes and routers past their contract are.
• Storage Heaters - allowed; some pre-1972 models contain asbestos, which is safe unless the unit is dismantled - see Asbestos.
• Tumble dryers - allowed; flag the known Whirlpool/Hotpoint/Indesit fire-risk models and link to the model checker.

Safety-critical & everyday items

• Bread Baskets - Basco-branded bread baskets are illegal to offer, as they remain company property; other makes are fine.
• Disability Aids - allowed and encouraged - just check they're in good working order.
• Food - a group decision; consider whether it's sealed, and mind the difference between a use-by date (a hard limit) and a best-before date (advisory only).
• Fur - no legal reason to reject it; groups can apply their own judgement, especially if an endangered species is suspected.
• Hearing aids, Glasses - allowed - no legal barrier, though both are fitted to the original owner's prescription.
• Safety of items offered - background guidance on furniture fire labels, cot mattresses, helmets, car seats (need R44.04 or R129 labelling) and tyres; nothing here is illegal to offer, but flag the risks.
• Sex toys - not illegal, but most groups choose not to allow them, for family-friendliness and hygiene reasons.
• Tickets and vouchers - a group decision; rail/train tickets are illegal to pass on, but unused Oyster cards are fine.
• Timeshare - not banned outright, but strongly discouraged - these "free" offers are usually a marketing technique with the real cost buried in ongoing fees.

Animals & living things

• Animal Rehoming Links - not a ruling page - a directory of rescue and rehoming organisations to signpost members to.
• Local Pet Policy - a template policy a group can adopt if it chooses to allow pet posts.
• No animal policy - a template policy a group can adopt if it chooses to ban all animal posts.
• Pet Mods - explains the "Pet Mod" role: a volunteer who screens every live-animal post before it's approved.
• Pets and animals - whether to allow live animals at all is each group's own decision (ChitChat allows none); see the linked pros, cons and sample policies.
• Pond life - frogspawn and tadpoles are a common seasonal offer; some groups disallow all pond life over invasive-species risk.
• Tortoises - generally fine - the common Horsfield's tortoise needs no licence; only worry if a rarer, licensed species is suspected.

Plants & natural finds

• Beach sand, stones, driftwood, seashells etc - sand and stones are illegal to remove from a beach; seaglass, shells, driftwood and fossils are fine.
• Plants - allowed, but never offer or propagate a banned invasive species (Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed and others - see the full list).

Media, copyright & authenticity

• Books - always fine; also worth pointing members to BookMooch, BookCrossing and charity-shop schemes to keep books circulating.
• Copyright Issues - software, music, DVDs and similar must be original, unused copies with no other copy retained - not pirated or upgraded versions.
• Counterfeit, Fake or Imitation items - allowed to offer as what they are, since owning or giving away an imitation isn't itself illegal; fake banknotes are the exception - illegal, and should go to the police.

Cross-cutting guidance & reference

• Recycling Organisations - not a ruling page - a directory of charities and recyclers to suggest when an item isn't suitable for Freegle.
• Specific items - the previous master index this page replaces; kept as a cross-reference for a few items without their own page, such as talcum powder, condoms, cots and Oyster cards.
• Waste Definition - background legal reference: passing something on for reuse doesn't make it "waste", so no waste-carrier licence is needed for ordinary Freegling.

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