Sarah Johnson

Your trash could be someone else's treasure, but chances are it's just plain junk. So instead of renting a dumpster or spending a Saturday making dump trips, customers of 1-800-Got-Junk are using the Web to throw away their unwanted stuff.

"E-mail is such a pervasive medium now; everyone's using it," says English professor Hilary Holladay, who leads workshops on the subject at the University of Massachusetts and Enterprise Bank and Trust Co., both in Lowell, Mass. "The question is, are we using it the best way we can and in the most appropriate way we can?"