Imagine you are a non profit in need of some new equipment. Or perhaps you're a business that's going out of business with loads of office equipment that needs to go somewhere before you close doors. Where do you go? What do you do? In either case, you could go through laborious processes to find/fund/beg for what you need, or liquidate/dispose of your inventory. Either option is far less than optimum, but for most, it's how it needs to happen.

Only it doesn't.

Throwplace is a hub that connects U.S. charities, international charities, businesses and individuals to "throw into" or "take from" the offerings listed on the site, to give away or get what they need. A sort of Freecycle on steroids. Only here, charities get first dibs. New or slightly used gear gets funneled towards them, while outdated and broken items, a.k.a. an opportunity for reuse or repair, go towards businesses and individuals. And that pile of xyz in the corner that you think is worthless? They'll gladly list that too, since it likely has someone, somewhere in the world that can make use of it.

Unlike a bricks and mortar donation site slike Goodwill, these goods only ship from you to someone else when they've found a home, avoiding the burden and expense that a physical store would incur managing what ends up not selling at a particular location, where it might otherwise sold in another part of the state, country, or world. And you can put lots of any size on Throwplace.

Throwplace also has one of the best pages of green links I've seen in a long while, ranging from the recycling resource Eco-Artware.com to the light living and shopping site, Earth Easy

What have you got, that you don't need? What do you need? It's out there, and somebody's on the other end, waiting. Find them.

Readers: Have you used this, or something like it? What's been your experience? What other ways have you found out there to enable resources finding those in need of resources?

Paul Smith is a sustainable business innovator, the founder of GreenSmith Consulting, and has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio School of Management in San Francisco. His overarching talent is "bottom lining" complex ideas, in a way that is understandable and accessible to a variety of audiences, internal and external to a company.

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