Sharing Is Good: How to Save Money, Time and Resources Through Collaborative Consumption (10 page)

Reduced Energy Consumption

What’s your morning commute like? For most Americans, getting

to work in the morning means sitting in 25 minutes of traffic to go less than 50 miles. Nationwide, 86 percent of Americans over six-teen get to work by car, truck or van. And around 75 percent drive alone. That means a lot of carbon emissions getting pumped into

the air just to move one person to and from their workplace. In the same car-sharing study conducted by the University of California

that was mentioned above, researchers found that on average, drivers traded vehicles with a fuel economy of 23 mpg for the use of shared vehicles with a fuel economy of 33 mpg. While car-sharing organizations offer a variety of vehicles to members, the majority are highly efficient hybrids, sedans, and compact cars. This helps reduce cost to both the company and car-sharing members, as well as reducing the harmful emissions associated with personal transportation.

In late 2011, the University of California, Berkeley, published a very interesting study: “Greenhouse Gas Emission Impacts of Carsharing in North America” (www.tsrc.berkeley.edu). Their research revealed that car-sharing programs have the power to significantly reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions in North America. The survey, which polled over 9,500 members of car-sharing programs in

the United States and Canada, found that while individual green-

house gas emissions increased slightly because some gained access to Why Share Now?

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a personal vehicle for the first time, these small individual increases were outweighed by the significant number of people able to drastically reduce their emissions through car-sharing.

“The number of carless households increasing their emissions is

comparatively large, constituting more than half of the respondents,”

noted the researchers. “However, the degree to which these house-

holds are increasing emissions as a result of car-sharing is small on an individual basis. The overall emission reduction is driven by the remaining respondents reducing their emissions by larger amounts

that compensate for increases of the majority.”

Ridesharing, a 21st-century twist on the familiar practice of

carpooling, can also take a big bite out of unnecessary fossil fuel consumption. Unlike commercial car-sharing, which requires the

purchase and maintenance of a large fleet of new vehicles, ridesharing involves privately owned vehicles already on the road. In addition to reducing waste by filling unused seats, ridesharing reduces the amount of money each person is required to spend on gas in a given month.

Sometimes, we can reduce energy consumption simply by leav-

ing our individual houses to gather in shared spaces. Freelancers and solopreneurs are one of the fastest-growing sectors of the workforce, yet many work at home because dedicated office space is so expensive. Instead of sitting at home with their individual lights, heat, and Internet on, coworking spaces consolidate consumption:

it’s 20 freelancers all sitting together, enjoying the same light, heat, and Internet.

Encourages Investment in Smart Design

Although we come equipped with a natural inclination to share

and barter, collaborative consumption is clearly a departure from the current paradigm. We’re stuck on excessive consumption and

self-centered services. Stepping outside the box enough to realize that access is more important than ownership and experiences more 50

Sharing is Good

important than tangible goods, puts one in the perfect state of mind for other worldview-shifting discoveries.

Thanks to the growing demand for collaborative consumption

services, there has been a shift in the way new entrepreneurs develop their business models. For decades, companies have been “designing for the dump” because they were convinced it was the only way to

remain in business. They intentionally designed goods to die, break, or blow up within two years — right about the time they would start to bombard you with commercials for the new model. This sneaky

strategy is called
planned obsolescence.
The problem is, people are getting wise to this faulty business strategy. We’re starting to realize that it’s us, our families, and the planet on the losing end of this cycle; only the corporations win.

Innovators have also started to realize that there’s powerful value in making something that’s of such high quality it doesn’t need to be replaced. Or, if that’s not feasible, making something that’s easy to share, repair, or recycle, if necessary. Instead of being purely focused on profits to be made by producing cheap and selling high to exploit a niche demographic of consumers, sharing economy companies realize that it makes sense to design products and services that help people connect, access what they need, enjoy new experiences, and share what they’re not using. Instead of designing things to become obsolete in a year or two, so the consumer will be forced into buying a replacement, they’re starting to design for extended use by multiple owners (even hundreds of owners) and effortless end-of-life recycling.

Sharing Saves You Money

While the sharing economy can do wonders for our communities

and the environment, let’s not forget the number one reason most

people are compelled to start sharing: it’s free! Thanks to economic mismanagement on an international scale, average people around

the world are feeling the financial squeeze. Whether we blame it

on corrupt bankers or a slow economy really doesn’t matter — the

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point is that people are hurting, and it’s becoming harder and harder to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. Just like so many past economic crises, people are desperate for relief, for an alternative that won’t make them feel like they’re banging their heads against the same Wall (Street) for the millionth time. There are many who feel collaborative consumption is that solution.

When we release material possessions from our white-knuckle

grip and acknowledge that it’s more important to be able to ac-

cess those things only when we need them, a huge world of savings opens up before our very eyes. Let me be clear, however: unlike past mantras of the environmental movement, collaborative consumption isn’t a lifestyle of austerity or self-denial. As Lauren Anderson, notes on CollaborativeConsumption.com, while the principles of

the sharing economy are “ultimately about reducing the amount of

wasteful consumption, it is certainly not about going without.” In many well-documented cases, sharing not only provides individuals and families with a pleasant, community-focused way to reduce expenses, it also creates opportunities for generating significant amounts of supplementary income, just by allowing others to access the possessions that you’re not currently using.

In an extremely popular blog post originally published on 7x7.

com, Shareable co-founder Neal Gorenflo details his year-long ex-

periment of deep participation in the sharing economy. Coworking, car-sharing, microlending, and a shared nanny were just some of the things he tried. At the end of 12 months, Gorenflo tallied it up: he had reduced his household expenses by $17,000.

On the Internet, there are dozens of similar stories told by in-

dividuals from all walks of life. An article published by
Forbes
in January 2013, “How People Make Cash in the Share Economy,”

tells several of them: there’s a man who saved over $1,000 sharing and borrowing stuff on Neighborgoods.com; a student who turned

dog sitting into a $1,200/month job; and a Chicago executive who

makes $1,000/month renting out his second car on RelayRides.

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Sharing is Good

Decreased Cost and Risk

The correlation between sharing and saving money is a simple one.

Buy less, spend less. By sharing resources, space, and skills freely within a community, it’s not necessary to buy as much from big box stores or traditional educational institutions. If you need a drill to build a bookcase, you might go out and spend $50 on a new cordless power drill. After using it for few hours, the bookcase is built, and the drill is put up on a shelf. Maybe you’ll use it again once or twice in a year. However, access to a tool-lending library or swap site where you can trade an unneeded item for someone else’s unneeded drill

eliminates and drastically reduces that expense.

Sharing unconventional things, like a nanny, a car, or a garden, also reduces both money and labor costs, spreading it out over many individuals instead of just one or two. In some cases, communities even engage in collective buying that allows them to invest in items that are better suited to widespread sharing, reducing individual costs over the short term, and upping return on that investment over the long term.

The opportunities to save money through sharing are almost as

numerous as the collaborative consumption companies that facili-

tate it. One can reserve everything from a spare room to an entire villa on Airbnb.com, a site that connects people who have extra

space with those who need it for short-term stays. Airbnb rentals are often listed at a much lower rate than hotel rooms in the same location, especially if there’s a special event in town. Trips that might otherwise have been way out of budget become possible when sharing lodging, not to mention that you get the pleasure of making a new friend in your destination city — a friend who might also lend you a bike or provide breakfast, saving you even more money. While you’re at it, collaborative consumption can allow you to assemble the vacation of your dreams without racking up a bunch of credit card debt. If you’re willing to stay with locals, why not get them to show you around as well? Experience-based marketplaces like Vayable and SideTour make it easy to find something to do in just about any city.

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Thanks to time banks and skill-sharing programs, even needs that

are more complicated than a ride or a place to stay can be met with little to no money exchanging hands. Need your gutters cleaned, but low on cash? Use time-dollars earned by teaching piano lessons or weeding a friend’s garden. Want to learn how to make pottery but

can’t afford the high-cost lessons? Trade for them using your Web development or cooking skills. Desperately need childcare, but can’t stomach the high monthly fees at the local facility? Consider sharing a nanny with other parents in your neighborhood. “Costs are split in any number of creative ways, often evenly split between the families,”

writes Kathleen Webb in a blog post for Shareable Magazine (www.

Shareable.net). “In a nanny-share arrangement, the nanny usually

earns 10–20 percent more than her counterparts employed by a

single family. Split down the middle, however, this creates a win-win situation for the families and the caregiver.”

So, Why Share Now?

So let’s think back to our original question. Why start sharing now?

The answer is simple, perhaps shockingly so. Sharing, without requiring a huge investment of money, time or space, can have a significant and almost immediate positive impact on a community. While traditional society tells us to form committees, beg for funding, or complain to politicians about things we want to change, the sharing economy provides an empowered alternative.

Through collaborative consumption, we can increase pride in our

communities and foster participation in the way we’re governed. We can encourage self-sufficient behavior and accountability, while also rekindling meaningful relationships and supporting those in the

community who are working toward the same things. We can reduce

waste and pump the brakes on rampant consumption, even of so-

called “green” products. By focusing on access instead of ownership, we can take a bite out of energy consumption and even reduce the

greenhouse gas emissions that are choking our planet. We can live 54

Sharing is Good

more simply, save money, and embrace a more sustainable lifestyle, all by switching our focus from
me
to
we
and from
mine
to
ours.

Chapter 4

How to Share

Now that we’ve discussed the history of sharing, and

why collaborative consumption is good for our communities,

wallets, and the environment, I hope you’re feeling excited. Maybe you’re starting to think, “Hey, this sharing thing isn’t so radical after all, and it sounds like there are some pretty big benefits to giving it a try.” Here’s what usually happens when I get excited about a new idea: I imagine all the potentially positive effects it could have in my life and in the lives of those I know. Then, I think about all the different ways to give it a try. Then I start to get overwhelmed. That’s why, in this chapter, I’m going to talk a little bit about “how” to share.