Sharing Is Good: How to Save Money, Time and Resources Through Collaborative Consumption (8 page)

burning nearly 25 percent of the coal, 26 percent of the oil, and 27

percent of the world’s natural gas.

• As of 2003, the United States had more private cars than licensed drivers, and gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles were among the

best-selling vehicles.

• New houses in the United States were 38 percent bigger in 2002

than in 1975, despite having fewer people per household on

average.10

As a result, Americans are in a huge amount of debt. We are over-

weight and depressed. Our air, water, and soil is some of the most contaminated in the world. This is the future that awaits the rest of the world if it continues to follow America’s greedy, wasteful lead.

Global environmental summits, like 2012’s Rio+20 or the annual

Conference of the Parties held by the UN each year, have attempted to tackle this issue by asking developing countries to slow or stop their consumption. Basically, what Western countries have said is:

“We messed up, and now we’re addicted to this type of consumption.

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We can see that it’s ruining the world, but we can’t ask people to give up all these luxuries now. So how about you help us out by slowing down your own development until we figure something out? If you

could just leave your forests intact, not pollute your rivers, and go without reliable electricity for a couple more decades, it would really do wonders for global C02 levels.” It’s no wonder that most of the developing world has refused to play ball.

We need a better way to move forward, together — one that

allows everyone to live a healthy, comfortable lifestyle without jeop-ardizing the ability of future generations to enjoy the same thing. If we don’t, the consequences will be dire, even deadly. We’re beginning to explode at the seams. Ugly piles of waste and pollution are starting to creep into unfortunate places. Our consumptive ways are screaming out for resolution.

Our Waste Has Nowhere to Go

“Throw it away.” We say it every day, every time we’re confronted with a thing that’s spoiled, used, broken, expired, unwanted, or

unneeded. “Throw it away.” Those words are usually followed im-

mediately by a flippant action: we bundle up the torn pair of pants, expired carton of milk, or rusty pair of pliers, and toss it in a container meant for “trash.” At that point, our job is done. After a while, the trash containers in our homes and businesses fill up, so we dump them into even larger containers. After a while those fill up too, so we pay to have them emptied by waste management companies that

use massive dump trucks to haul all that spoiled, used, broken, expired, unwanted, unneeded junk away. Rarely, if ever, do we stop to think about where, exactly “away” is. If we were to follow the massive, churning, piles of waste that work their way through our municipal systems every day, we would see that there really is no away.

Instead, there are landfills, lots of them, where we attempt to

bury our waste. Or massive barges ferry our garbage a polite dis-

tance away from shore and then dump it in the ocean. Or waste

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incinerators combust our especially hazardous waste, transforming it into dangerous pollution that we then inhale. In essence, everything we’ve ever thrown “away” is still very much “here.” Sure, some of it gets rescued before it hits the trash can. Some things are separated from the main waste stream to be repaired, reused, or recycled.

But what happens when the resulting new or refurbished product is spoiled, used, broken, expired, unwanted, or unneeded? That’s right.

We throw it away.

The Problem with the “Green Economy”

In recent years, a few of us have started to wake up. We’ve start-ed to realize that we have the opportunity to change, to get off of the train hurtling into the brick wall. Thanks to public information campaigns and scientific research, most of us now realize we can

choose to live differently and reduce our impact on the one and only planet we have. Companies have started to understand that people

care about the environmental impact of their purchases. We read

labels; we research company histories and manufacturing processes.

We vote with our dollars, supporting companies that make an effort to reduce their own carbon footprint while providing products that help us do the same.

All of a sudden, economists and business analysts started to talk about the “green economy” and what it could mean for profit margins.

Soon, every industry, from fashion to food, started to brag about the sustainability of its products. Going green became a marketing slogan, and people were drawn in by labels that claimed to be “natural,” “organic,” “eco-friendly,” “recycled/recyclable,” or “fair trade.” The Internet exploded with websites designed to help us go green with a minimal amount of effort; if we didn’t want to do even that much, Internet green businesses could do it for us. Familiar corporations started advertising all the things we needed to live a lower-impact life, like CFL light bulbs, Energy Star-rated refrigerators, and socks made from organic cotton. If everyone would just buy an electric

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car, we’re told, we could eliminate the C02 emissions causing global climate change — and everything will be perfect! Sound too good

to be true? It is.

Here’s the problem with the green economy: it’s still consum-

erism. It operates on the same false principle that
things
can make us happy. They may be cleaner, greener, biodegradable things, but they’re still not going to fix what’s wrong with our planet and society. Changing all our light bulbs does not absolve us of a lifetime of rampant consumption. It won’t change the fact that we’re running

out of food, water, and clean air on an increasingly crowded planet.

The green economy still excludes those who don’t have money; ad-

vertisers go to great lengths to imply that if you don’t buy a high-end stainless steel reusable mug, high-efficiency washing machine, and solar panels for your roof, you’re destroying the planet.

After a certain period of time, we find ourselves up against a green wall: we’ve bought all the green gadgets and recyclable gizmos we can afford, yet the green economy keeps telling us to “save the planet” by buying more. We start to feel hopeless — and even embarrassed. We realize that there are millions of people in other countries who’ve got even less money to go green. We start to feel like it is pointless, and 38

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stop trying. Then we get to enjoy lots of eco guilt trips from friends and family who haven’t figured out that it’s all a sham.

Most of us know consumption is getting us nowhere, so why try

to consume our way out of the problem? We need a better way. A

radical new way of thinking that allows anyone to participate, regardless of how much they have or don’t have. Although it’s never easy to effect change on a societal scale, it’s not impossible. We can create an environment that encourages people to embrace a different way of living, but first, we need to know what that looks like. We need a recipe:

What is needed to encourage a new, more shareable world:

1. A critical mass of people who are willing to question what it

means to be truly wealthy. The human race’s most valuable asset

is people power. You might feel like you’re the only one who’s

sick and tired of all this mindless consumption, but you’re not.

Reconnecting with each other and our natural inclination for

sharing is step one.

2. A generous helping of creativity and innovation so that we can solve problems with the technology, energy, and resources that

are available now, not those that may or may not be available in

20 years.

3. Several dozen new definitions of cooperation and collaboration, and a willingness to capitalize on the talent and resources that

exist among our networks. Who cares if we have to share the po-

dium as long as we’re on the winning team?

4. A heaping spoonful of comraderie. Not only are we all in this together, but we’re better together. Sharing what we’ve got, whether it’s time, talent, or resources, is the fastest way to a better world.

Stir well, and let rise. When combined, these ingredients form

the perfect environment for growing a new economy: an economy

built on sharing rather than consuming, but still able to support Why Share Now?

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profitable business and technological innovation. In this new economy, people can still live comfortable, private lives. It’s just that those lives will be richer, fuller, and more meaningful because they are connected to the people and places that matter.

Now that we’ve got the recipe, it’s time to start cooking.

Movements like Occupy Wall Street and Idle No More show that

we’re ready for a shift away from the false power of things and toward the galvanizing power of people. We are the change we’ve been waiting for. By sharing what we already have (time, energy, money, goods, foods, skills,) we can create communities of abundance. By changing our idea of what it means to be sustainable people, families, and businesses, and working together to achieve it instead of alone in our own silos of eco-guilt, we will rediscover our commonalities, our connections, our passions. Sustainability, efficiency, and happiness will emerge as by-products, and our communities will become

cleaner, happier places to live. If you need still more convincing, read on. The following sections present specific reasons why
sharing is
good
for you — and for society as a whole.

Sharing Bolsters the Local Economy

Human beings don’t like to change, so the suggestion that we throw out this consumption-obsessed system and build a new society that values open access, experience, and social responsibility is more than a little daunting. Lots of us are tired. We’re tired of the bad news that floods the airwaves, tired of broken promises and leaders who don’t lead. We’re tired of being told “that’s just the way it is” when profit takes precedence over people and planet. In fact, sometimes it feels like it would just be easier to give up, to stop trying to make a difference and just go with the flow. Yes, building a sharing economy will take work, hard work. That’s why it’s important to acknowledge all that we stand to gain by embarking on this new journey together.

Sharing, even on a very small scale, makes a big impact on the people and places involved. It gets neighbors talking and trusting each

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other again. Skillshares, timebanks, and cooperatives keep money, resources, and talents focused in the community where they’re needed.

Crowdfunding provides businesses that are circling the drain with a way to get back on their feet, free from the predatory practices of banks or investors. Coworking, business incubators, and maker

collectives offer support for thinkers and creators, encouraging others to follow the same entrepreneurial path. Swapping and bartering reduces waste, halts mindless consumption, and retrains individuals to extend the lifecycle of things they already have in creative ways.

On the individual level, it can be a shortcut to financial responsibility, helping people to see that they don’t have to sacrifice comfort for efficiency. Collaborative consumption makes it possible for everyone to live a simpler, healthier, low-impact lifestyle regardless of the amount of cash they have on hand, and that’s good news in a time

when cash is hard for many to come by.

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Encourages Community Involvement

Sharing can’t exist without a community. But community doesn’t

have to be based on physical proximity or even geographical prox-

imity. Communities can also be built around an idea, a behavior, an interest, a need, or even basic similarities like age, illness, or sport team allegiance. In order to share, people must have an understanding about what they want and what they are capable of giving. The most successful sharing comes from communities that have common ideals, values, and goals. Because of this emphasis on a shared destiny, collaborative consumption has inherent benefits for local economies.