Anyone who knows me knows that I love sneakers. Ok, you might even say I am sneaker obsessed. From the walk-in closet with 160+ pairs of shoes, to my blog SneakerBlogger, to the custom Nike’s in Yahoo! colors I created for CES earlier this year, I try to find any way I can to incorporate them into my personal and professional life. So when I saw that Yahoo! was going to be hosting a Freecycle-inspired “Free is Good Fair” for employees on campus today (a belated Earth Day swap meet) and that one of the items being donated would be Chief Yahoo David Filo’s signature Adidas sneakers, I started cleaning out my closet.

Much to my wife’s delight, among other things I contributed were five pairs of sneakers and athletic shoes and I was able to actually watch people pick them up and give them a new home. (Yes, people WILL wear other people’s shoes…) Hopefully they will get some great use and their new owners will think hard about what THEY could give up to turn their personal trash into someone else’s treasure.

I’m told Yahoos brought in more than 2,000 items from closets and basements throughout the Bay Area that might otherwise have been destined for landfills. The more interesting things I saw included a vintage map of Silicon Valley businesses from 2000, a red lacy bra (which seemed to disappear quickly), last-generation Tivos, Rockem Sockem Robots, vacuum cleaners, a complete set of Star Trek: Next Generation VHS tapes, bunny slippers, fleeces galore, Yahoo! schwag (Yahoo! Chicago stickers, anyone?), and gently used sporting equipment. Items that had not seen the light of day for years were suddenly adopted by new guardians, who promised to put them into immediate use. Although I think the snow skis might have to wait until next season…

We duplicated this fair in six California, New York, and Oregon offices. And whatever wasn’t claimed was carted away by local charities like the Salvation Army.

So if you see me around campus with size 10.5 Adidas shell-toes, know that they will be well cared for and infused with the spirit of giving.

Hmm… I wonder what size Jerry wears?…

Here are some photos and a video recap:

Lucas Mast
Senior PR Manager
Connected Life

I do. And so does everyone else in our Northern California offices. Her name is Danielle Bricker. And she is singularly responsible for getting people out of their gas-guzzling cars and into far-more-pleasurable, alternative modes of transportation (WiFi shuttle buses, commuter trains, light rail, bikes, van pools, carpools, etc.).

With the title of “Commute Coordinator,” Danielle is likely a maverick in Corporate America. She’s not only a cheerleader for a greener way of life (literally walking the walk), she’s there to help every Yahoo figure out the most practical way from Point A to Point B. And she has a good answer for just about every excuse you can come up with: “What if my kid gets sick in the middle of the day and I have no car?” Our guaranteed ride home program won’t cost you a dime. “But I’ll get sweaty on my bike!” We’ve got showers. “No one else works my hours.” Let me check my database of carpoolers.

Here’s a report NBC just ran about Danielle and our commute program, inspired by photos she took on a recent commute from San Francisco.

With fossil fuel flirting with $4 a gallon, you need to get yourself a Danielle.

Props to Paul Stamatiou, former Yodel intern, for his great how-to on embedding Flickr slideshows.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

EDITOR’S NOTE: The earthwise among you know that tomorrow is Earth Day. We are teaming up with Freecycle™ and other popular reuse groups to inspire people to swap stuff they’d normally send to a landfill. In honor of Yahoo!’s “Free is Good” campaign, into which we’ve tucked treasures like a Smart Car, eco-resort vacation, and Sheryl Crow tickets, we’ve asked a Yahoo! user to reflect on what a boon Freecycle has been to her life:

September 19, 2003 should be memorable as my son Davis’ fifth birthday. Instead, we remember it more clearly as the day we started the very long recovery from Hurricane Isabel, which had hit our small Virginia town the day before. We lost just about everything in the bottom three feet of our garage to floodwater.

Several months later, I read about the local Yorktown Freecycle Yahoo! group and quickly joined. I immediately saw how it could help my town in its recovery efforts (which is, I might add, STILL ongoing five years later as friends and neighbors continue to shell out to repair floors and foundations).

The group proved useful just a few days after I joined. I had posted a want for a lawnmower and within 48 hours, I heard from “uubooklady.” When she let me know that her husband had recently bought a new mower to replace their 1985 Toro and that we were welcome to it, I was elated. I’ve always been happy to use hand-me-downs, and Deron Beal’s brilliant idea to use modern technology to share belongings locally via the Freecycle Network was a perfect match for my earth-friendly leanings.

When my husband Jim went to retrieve his “new” mower, lo and behold, his work colleague Ellis came pushing it out of the garage! These men worked mere feet from one another at NASA, yet they would have never made the lawnmower connection if it hadn’t been for Yahoo! Groups and the Freecycle Network.

I started FreecyclePoquoson for my own town that very week and have been happily moderating it ever since. We’ve grown to almost 600 members and we connect neighbors on a daily basis.

I’ve given away furniture, kitchen items, clothing, toys, and office supplies. I’ve received puzzles, games, craft supplies, used egg cartons (we raise hens and reuse cartons), even empty Kool-Aid Jammers (which I sew into very cool purses). I also get nearly-expired bread each week from a guy I met on Freecycle, who rescues it from grocery stores. I’m now known as “the bread lady” because I put a giant stack (we’re talking over 100 loaves) on my porch for neighbors who might be too proud to get food from the food pantry but are happy to keep it from being tossed into the landfill.

There are literally MILLIONS of similar stories about how helpful the Freecycle Network has been in people’s lives. I’ve seen time again how, while Freecycle often begins with an experience of a person receiving, it inevitably turns into discovering the joy of giving.

Freecycle, through Yahoo!, makes every day Earth Day and provides a modern, free, easy to use format to prove true the old adage, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” It sure beats spending hours having a yard sale or trolling sales!

Davis is nine now. He’s never known anything other than listing his old “stuff” on Freecycle. I don’t know when Poquoson will fully recover, but I do know that Freecycle and Yahoo! have and will continue to play an important part in the healing process… both for our community and for Mother Earth.

Traci-Dale
Yahoo! Groups user
Moderator, FreecyclePoquoson

Winston Churchill said: “We shape our buildings. Thereafter, they shape us”.

On Tuesday, I watched Jerry Yang and his wife Akiko Yamazaki speak in the sunny main atrium of the Yang and Yamazaki Energy and Environment Center at Stanford University. The newly dedicated building will house scholars whose mission is to solve difficult environmental problems. Jerry and Akiko contributed $50 million toward the construction of this state-of-the-art, day lit building that represents the cutting edge of sustainable design. Made with recycled steel and other green materials, the building will use an estimated 56% less energy and 90% less water than comparable non-green buildings.

The building also encourages collaboration, an especially critical feature when you consider the diverse disciplines it will require to tackle problems such as climate change and growing water shortages. People are more likely to write papers or conduct research together if they regularly bump into one other in the hallway. The open floor plans at Yahoo! are based on the same principle of open communication. Jerry and Aikiko’s building brings professors from a staggering range of departments together with students in a building that is green, beautiful and invites interaction and cross-pollination.

Y2E2 reflects green design at the most thoughtful level: low impact in its initial construction and ongoing operations; consideration for the health and productivity of the students and faculty who will spend their time within its walls; and a place that will encourage playful, unconventional, creative thinking that is the hallmark of Silicon Valley at its best. It’s also exactly the sort of living and thinking that that has to happen in order to solve some of the planet’s most pressing challenges.

Standing in the building’s atrium that evening, surrounded by a cross-section of scholars, business people, students, and other greenies, I was reminded why Yahoo! is so committed to the environment and energy efficiency. The guy at the top obviously cares quite a bit about this stuff, too.

Here’s a video of the dedication.

Chris Page
Director of Climate and Energy Strategy