Sharing Is Good: How to Save Money, Time and Resources Through Collaborative Consumption (11 page)

What’s the first thing you should try to share? How do you find

a way to share it? Will you have to pay a membership to a bunch

of sharing services? When you start to confront so many questions, you might feel tempted to bail on the whole thing, putting it off until you’re in a place where you’ve got more time/money/brain space to think about it. But that time might never arrive. The best way to figure out this whole sharing economy and where you fit in is just to give it a try. However, it’s a good idea to know a little bit about the 55

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different types of sharing, and the communities where you’re likely to find it.

Styles of Sharing

If you’re an entrepreneurial spirit, you might have already noticed a need that could be met by sharing in your community. If you live in a place where collaborative consumption is just catching on (or maybe unheard of ), it might be better to try an established online community that can help you learn the ropes. Either way, taking the first step is important and likely to be life changing without really requiring you to drastically change your life. The metamorphosis is more a shift in thinking than anything else. Here’s the awesome thing about living a simpler, cheaper, more sustainable lifestyle through sharing: it’s free. Unlike putting solar panels on your house or buying a hybrid, there is no investment required to start sharing. You don’t need to take a class, attend a workshop, or get a permit to start sharing (although sometimes these things can be helpful for really big shares).

Collaborative consumption requires only things that you already

have and people you already know (or are willing to meet). If you’re able to make a phone call, attend a Meetup, organize a get-together, or conduct a Google search, you’ve got all the know-how that’s needed to reduce waste, conserve resources, and connect with other people who are also striving for a low-impact life.

Peer-to-Peer Sharing

Informal, local collaborative consumption is often called
peer-to-peer
(P2P) sharing. As the name suggests, this style of sharing is conducted for and by peers. Just about any type of sharing service can be executed at the peer-to-peer level. In fact, some people think that this is the purest and most powerful style of sharing. P2P sharing is all about people sharing resources to meet each other’s needs. It’s yet another way that regular people can opt out of a system that

doesn’t fit their lifestyle or personal goals. Peer-to-peer sharing often How to Share

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(but not always) means the people involved get to make up the rules about how things will work, so solutions can be customized to the community they are meant to serve, rather than employing a one-size-fits-all attitude.

In P2P schemes, the shared resource (time, things, experiences)

is usually exchanged during a direct encounter with another person or group of people. This is different from collaborative consumption businesses like coworking or Zipcar, where the thing that’s shared is owned by a single person or part of a managed fleet owned by a business entity.

P2P sharing can also mean that people pool their resources to-

gether to create something that can then be shared with a larger

community. Examples would be a church group that builds a tool

sharing library, or neighbors building a community garden. Most of the time, peer-to-peer sharing takes place in the communities where members live, work, or play in close proximity to one another, but face-to-face interaction isn’t a requirement for P2P sharing. In fact, some of the most successful P2P ventures are those that allow complete strangers to barter, rent, or trade with each other. It’s probable that there are plenty of examples of P2P sharing happening right

now in your community; you just haven’t recognized them as col-

laborative consumption.

Perhaps there is a group of people who all work for the same com-

pany, and they figure out that they all live on the same side of town.

Instead of all fighting the traffic individually in otherwise empty cars, the coworkers decide to carpool. Each day of the week, it’s another person’s turn to pick up the others and drive to and from work. This splits the cost and decreases each person’s individual carbon footprint just a little bit. In addition, they have the pleasure of each other’s company and a full car along the way. This is peer-to-peer sharing.

When I was still in high school, my mother belonged to a food

co-op. Instead of being run out of a storefront, this co-op was simply made up of a few savvy neighbors who realized that they could pool 58

Sharing is Good

their buying power to make healthy foods more accessible. Once

or twice a month, these families would select their goods out of a natural foods distribution catalog. There was no cost for membership, and deliveries were made to the house of the organizing family.

When deliveries arrived, individuals volunteered to help unload the truck and sort the goods into piles that represented each family’s order. As long as there were enough people interested and the orders were of a high enough dollar amount to make it worth the delivery company’s time, the pop-up co-op provided a more convenient, affordable way for families to eat well. This is peer-to-peer sharing.

A few years ago, a woman who worked at my coworking space

decided that her huge yard was going to waste. She already had a

garden, but it only took up a small portion of the space that was available. She talked to a few friends and neighbors and found that many of them wished there was an affordable CSA (Community

Supported Agriculture) within biking or walking distance. As my

friend discovered, these people were more than willing to come and help her turn over new sections of her yard so that the growing capacity could be increased. All they wanted was a share of the harvest.

Thus, a tiny hyper-local CSA was born. This is peer-to-peer sharing.

The cool thing about these examples is that, at the time, no one

involved realized that they were peer-to-peer sharing. They were just clever people who realized that, by coming together, they could solve their problems in an efficient manner — and probably have some

good times along the way. That’s why P2P sharing is the easiest way to experiment with the sharing economy.

Online P2P

The caveat of P2P sharing is that it requires, well, peers. People living in remote communities or in areas where sharing is still a foreign concept might find it hard to engage in this kind of sharing. But even a lack of interested friends or urban density doesn’t have to keep you from sharing. The explosion of online social networking over

How to Share

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the past few years means that communities can form among people

who live far away from each other, and perhaps will never even meet.

Online sharing services make it possible to swap, barter, and learn from people living thousands of miles away from you, even in other countries. These online services and marketplaces can be a great way to experiment with relatively low risk.

The Internet has spawned “an unprecedented degree of intercon-

nectivity as well as an infrastructure for participation,” write Rachel Botsman and Roo Rodgers in
What’s Mine Is Yours
. “Our immer-sion in innovative information, communication and technology

(ICT) platforms, specifically online social networks and handheld mobile devices, is…driving us toward a ‘we’ mindset.”

No matter what it is you want to share, from your backyard to

your collection of
Star Trek
DVDs, there’s almost guaranteed to be a website that will help you get started. The great thing about online sharing is that it can allow you to expand your community without having to travel or take time away from your busy life. Although

nothing can replace the experience of meeting a new friend in person, online relationships can be just as valid, creating networks of support between people who have never even spoken a word to each other.

RelayRides, a car-sharing company based in San Francisco, is a

great example of what this looks like in real life. The company uses its online platform to help people rent out their vehicles during the hours or days when they’re not needed. Vehicle owners get the joy of a few extra dollars in their pocket to help offset gas, insurance, and maintenance fees, while renters gain access to a reliable vehicle for a fraction of what traditional car rental companies charge.

thredUP.com, an online clothes swapping community, is another

example of how P2P communities can function without being tied

to a specific city or neighborhood. The thredUP website acts as a virtual consignment boutique for parents who find it hard to afford high-quality clothes while their kids are still growing. The website offers cash for gently used, brand-name children’s clothing and 60

Sharing is Good

shoes, and it pays the shipping for parents who’re willing to clean out their closets. The like-new clothing is then listed on the site at drastic discounts compared to retail prices. The process allows cash-strapped parents to purchase high-quality clothing, while decreasing the amount of clothing that’s thrown away prematurely.

Sharing Companies and Business-to-Business Sharing

Communities are needed for sharing, but you might be surprised to learn that communities aren’t always made up of people. Well, ok, there are people involved, but the major players can be something else. Businesses, especially locally owned, small to mid-sized businesses, have a huge capacity for sharing. Not only can businesses share with the individuals in their larger community, but they can form communities and engage in sharing behaviors with each other

as well.

First, businesses can share knowledge. In the traditional business world, when businesses conduct market research or develop new

technologies, they keep their findings under lock and key. Proprietary information can be as small as a secret recipe or as large as a new marketing campaign. Traditionally, sharing information with others in your industry was considered stupid because it would eliminate your competitive advantage. But this is only true if
profit
is a company’s sole reason for existence. The sharing economy has given

birth to an entire generation of business people who think it’s more important to fill a need, improve a community, solve a problem, or reduce waste than it is to make a profit.

This new perspective on what it means to be a successful business removes the barrier for businesses to share resources and information with each other. Because they’re more interested in serving

their community in a smart, efficient, sustainable way, these businesses don’t mind letting their “competitors” in on their secrets. After all, two heads are better than one. When businesses take a collaborative approach to innovation, instead of patenting and hoarding How to Share

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everything to themselves, smarter products or ideas make it to the market faster, which is a win for everyone.

“We’ve been trained to believe that for businesses to be suc-

cessful, they have to rake in as much profit as possible and deliver short-term gains at all costs,” wrote Sara Horowitz, founder of The Freelancer’s Union.13 “But the quiet revolution is creating a new social market ecosystem that values transparency and responsibility …

The simplicity of it is what makes it so appealing: it’s not led by government or big business, just a group of people with shared needs and a common vision. That doesn’t mean government and business

play no role. In fact, their active participation in this quiet revolution is critical.”

So how can an entrepreneur or brick-and-mortar business sup-

port the sharing economy? Well, companies can build their business model around the idea of facilitating sharing, either between people, like Airbnb and Kickstarter, or between a customer and the company, like Zipcar, which offers a fleet of cars for sharing that belong to the company. But what about traditional businesses that are already built around the one-direction, profit-driven mode? There are opportunities for them to share as well. B2B (Business 2 Business) sharing is best exemplified in the quiet but robust commercial barter markets that exist around the world. These marketplaces allow businesses to conduct transactions with each other without the use of traditional currency. You might be surprised to learn that major companies, corporations we think of as “The Man,” and even national governments often engage in this efficient type of sharing.

As you might expect, B2B sharing works a little bit differently

than P2P swapping or bartering. First, it’s probably not a good idea for companies to meet each other in a parking lot to conduct a trade, the way a person might do with someone they met on Craigslist.

Instead, businesses typically utilize recognized trade exchanges.

These trade exchanges facilitate B2B indirect barters while keeping track of the exchanges through trade dollars. Second, also unlike you 62

Sharing is Good

and me, businesses can’t just give stuff away because it’s taking up too much room in the warehouse. For a company to share, it has to make good business sense. “What businesses offer in a trade exchange is excess capacity,” explains Howell. Excess capacity is the difference between what’s available for sale and what’s actually selling. “It’s better for a business to barter away what it can’t sell in cash, and barter within a trade exchange is an easier sale,” Howell continues. If you’re a pizza restaurant with lots of food but very little cash, barter exchanges make it possible to trade your “excess capacity” for plumbing repair, marketing, or even just a nice dinner that isn’t pizza.

This method of putting idle inventory to good use as barter fod-

der isn’t limited to mom and pop shops, either. In his book, Jerry Howell tells the story of one of the most famous trades in history, transacted between PepsiCo, Inc. and the Soviet Union in 1990.