Bunz, the online trading site, sees surge in bartering in the days after holidays

It's theweek after Christmas, and all through the house ...there are unwantedgifts sitting around all over the place.

And if some of you don't actually need these presents and they could make someone else happy, what should you do?

According to Eli Klein, community manager of Bunz Trading Zone, the gifts can be cheerfully swapped online.

• How a Toronto mom got all her Christmas gifts without spending a cent

Klein toldMetro Morningon Tuesday thatBunz, which was created in Canada, is seeing a surge of activity in the days after Christmas.

Bunz,a bartering platform where no cash is exchanged that exists in the form of a website, Facebook groupsand a mobile app,sees about 700 trades completed in an average day. Before Christmas, the number of completed trades jumped to closer to 1,000 a day.

Klein said there's nothing rude about exchanging a gift for the item you want. He said loved ones would want you to have the items you actually want.

"We like to force the examination of value. I think that's really what a lot of the philosophy of Bunz is about. It's about looking at the things you have and realizing that, if they don't have value to you, what good are they?"

Gift cards, clothes, booze exchanged

While Bunzusers often trade for used goods or well-worn clothes, Klein said people realized they could find brand new or high quality items on the site during a holiday programcalled "Gift It."

And there are plenty more new goods online as people start regifting their presents.

The trading platform has about 550,000 items on the site in total, Klein said, and about 10 per cent of thoseitemswere posted in the last 30 days. Some 20,000 items were posted in the last 10 days alone.

"That shows you what people are off-loading from Christmas," he said.

Klein said the items available include gift cards, clothes and alcohol. "A common currency, actually, is booze. People trade it and get what they want."

Trading unwanted gifts is actually a good thing, he said, because the gifts go to people who can actually use them and the trading keeps stuff out of landfills.

Bunz, which he described asa cross between Kijijiand Instagram, calls itself a trade-based community for exchanging goods and services.

Users sign up to create a profile that lists items that they want to swap or they want to have. People message each other, a conversation starts, they negotiate the terms of deal, and people meet offline to exchange the items