Money saver: How to pick up free items in France
These popular French websites allow you to find items people are giving away, and there are even tax breaks available if you donate your objects
The Geev app includes food donations and other goods
Geev
Spring cleaning means people all over France have clothes, furniture and other objects they are looking to get rid of.
As well as well-known sites for selling second-hand items, such as Leboncoin and Facebook Marketplace, there are numerous options when it comes to giving items away for free and finding donations in your area.
We look at a few of the most popular websites.
Geev
Geev is a website and app with more than 3.7 million users, and more than 17 million donations since launching in 2017.
It has sections for furniture, clothing, appliances and food.
The site’s USP is its ‘banana’ system.
On signing up, users receive three ‘bananas’, each one allowing them to send a message about an ad within 48 hours of it being posted.
You can get more credits by donating items or paying for a premium membership.
The idea is to prevent a small number of users from reserving all the donations.
Donnons.org
This site has a more basic concept but is also very popular.
You can search by specific categories such as ‘fashion’ and ‘automobile’.
The website promotes local donations for environmental reasons, but the owner may agree to post the object.
Alternatives include toutdonner.com and recupe.net.
Trëmma
In 2021, Emmaüs created its own online platform to appeal to people who would not ordinarily think of donating objects to the charity.
As well as its physical stores, Emmaüs has an online shop, label-emmaus.co, where you can purchase donated items.
Now, via tremma.co, this includes objects people have uploaded directly.
When you use Trëmma to donate an item, you are able to select which cause will receive the proceeds from the sale.
Once it finds a buyer, drop it off at a collection point or hand it over in person.
You can receive a receipt worth 60% of the price of the donation, which is tax-deductible.
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