The other day, I was making a list of all the strategies I could think of to reduce the amount of stuff that we all use day in and day out. Among the more wordy options – extended producer responsibility, internalizing externalities – was a simple concept: sharing.
I’m a parent of a fourth grader. As any parent knows, thousands of hours are spent in those early years teaching our young ones about sharing. We have songs about sharing, books about sharing, games about sharing.
Somewhere along the path to grown-up-hood, we too often lose that really important lesson.
Somehow sharing becomes an inconvenience, even an embarrassment. Sometimes we want to share, but we don’t know how or with whom. So, we have this crazy situation where each house on a block may have its own ladder, lawnmower, wagon, fax machine, bundt pan, interview suit, snow blower, second car, roof rack and countless other items which are seldom used. If we get together and share these things, we can decrease the time working to buy and maintain them, decrease the energy and materials needed to make and distribute so many of them, decrease the stuff crammed into our garages, and – perhaps most importantly – strengthen our community since sharing requires communication and time together.
I’m happy to report that there is a wonderful new resource for those who want to reinvigorate sharing in our life. Janelle Orsi and Emily Doskow have written a book, to be released on June 2nd, called: The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life & Build Community.
This book is like the grown up version of all those Barney songs my daughter used to sing in kindergarten. It doesn’t just extol the economic, environmental and community building benefits of sharing, it helps us do more of it. It has legal explanations, checklists of things to discuss before sharing big items, sample sharing agreements, tips for discussing the inevitable challenges.
The book’s description says:
“The ultimate beauty of sharing is that it’s a solution we create for ourselves. It’s not a government program, nor is it the “latest and greatest” product marketed to us on billboards. It’s a solution based on our own needs and lifestyles, in our own communities. It’s a way for each of us to shape our own lives in positive ways and simultaneously benefit the world as a whole. In that respect, sharing is more than a simple trend: Some might even say our society is moving toward a sharing revolution.”
The Sharing Solution is available on line from its publisher (nolo.com) or any number of online vendors including Amazon or Powell’s. Or better yet, ask your local library to get a copy or round up a bunch of friends to each pitch in a few dollars and share a copy.
Annie
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May 28th, 2009 at 4:26 am
this is simply beautiful.
let true community be the solution.
May 28th, 2009 at 9:54 am
A beautiful way to see this in action is in free software. Instead of companies struggling and spending resources to build the same product independently to be able to compete, free software communities share their knowledge, product and time with each other.
And it has proven to be a very effective method to produce software. Google for Ubuntu or Fedora, maybe even try it….
May 30th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Now I realize that sharing fits a green lifestyle, I don’t have to feel embarrassed when borrowing and lending stuff all the time!
May 30th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
[...] to think in globally sustainable terms (vs. only about local benefit). Hopefully the concepts of sharing, and peer-based community will gain sufficient traction to start making a change to the [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Hi…
I´m writting from Brasil, so forgive my poor English…
My neighbour and I share some flower vases of our gardens!!! It´s a nice experience!!!
Congrats on your work!
Daniela
June 6th, 2009 at 7:29 am
The Story of Stuff…
The Story of Stuff is a short, 20min movie that tries to show a bigger picture of our every day consumption of everything. To anyone living outside the US, most of the facts presented in the movie are nothing new. The real problem lies, as always, in a…
June 6th, 2009 at 7:47 am
i’d just like to say that a lot of that movie was exxageration. the world’s economy is not so doom and gloom. if we didn’t do this, our government would have no money.
June 7th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I was excited to bump into your blog (I’m a fan of your movie!) and this post while I was writing a post in my own blog that references The Sharing Solution (building on their info for how to do consensus decision-making). I just caught a “Making a Difference” segment on NBC News that featured people in Michigan doing clothing swaps in response to their disintegrating economy. I love how the concept of sharing “stuff” is spreading–the upside of a down economy. Looking forward to reading more of your blog.
June 16th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Love love love sharing!!
June 18th, 2009 at 4:13 am
in my office we share everything from clothes to food to apartments. i work at a university, but maybe people shouldnt lose the “poor college kid” mindset.
June 19th, 2009 at 11:04 am
I will be more than happy to share your anti-American, anti-capitalism views with my friends.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:13 am
I just discovered several great resource websites through the NC Office of Environmental Education’s Informed Consumer Section:
Lendlist provides an online way to SHARE and track the things you lend out to others: http://www.lendlist.org/
SwapTree provides an online way to swap books, dvds, video games etc. : http://www.swaptree.com/
June 26th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Greetings from Nice, France! Absolutely on-board with the sharing ethos and I firmly believe its time has come; my own informal research shows 70% of the cars on my street are used between once and three times a week-what sense is there in that? Boats in the harbour, way less. We have to break the the ‘own to enjoy’ culture if we are to survive & thrive.
June 26th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
There needs to be a sequel to the ’sharing’ book:
“How to fix borrowed things BEFORE you bring them back.”
There’s a reason some of us don’t share anymore. Too many people can’t understand that sharing means sharing the cost of ownership, too.
June 26th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
P.S. I don’t mean to be grumpy. I did have a nice recent experience where someone actually fixed something of mine that they borrowed and it broke. I was very pleasantly surprised.
June 26th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Hi, im writting from Ecuador South America, my family just moved to a nice new neighbourhood, im going to start sharing with my new neighbours. One Live
June 26th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Common sense eventually coming forth through mere need: We only have one earth and it was given to us to “work it and take care of it” not to rampage and destroy it. I`ve always been for sharing… Even at this moment my husband and I are trying to entice some friends to share in purchasing a piece of land in the countryside to improve it, teach poor people how to start cultivating their own basic food around their abodes and, enjoy the simple pleasures of a less complicated life away from the mall and the consumer temptations.
May God bless all your initiatives.
June 28th, 2009 at 6:41 am
I live in a housing co-operative where we have a “sharing room”, a closet in the laundry room. Any items that people no longer need are left in the room for others to pick up and use. The downside is that eventually, the room gets full, but then we organize a delivery to a local thrift store, and start again. I rarely buy clothing, except socks and underwear, and the occasional bathing suit. Keeps expenses down and it feels like we’re doing something good.
I’m working on convincing our gardening committee to plant more edible landscaping (apple trees, berries etc.) for the kids to tend and harvest.
Co-operative housing, much more common in Canada,
http://www.chfcanada.coop/eng/pages2007/about_1.asp
is a way of having housing security without having to worry about individual mortgages and expensive maintenance costs. You have control in how the place is run, and you have the security about not worrying about rents going sky-high or the place being sold from under you. We’re raising three kids in one, and the best part is, it’s a wonderful community, so much potential. Very different mind-set from the “American Dream” of owning a home, but it is our home, and it feels good, and we’re secure and happy.
We also don’t own a car, but belong to a car co-op, where we share cars, but on a very large scale:
http://www.carsharing.net/
Keep up the good work.
June 29th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I share a vespa, parking spaces and eventually will share my car with my friends. Sharing is where the difference comes in- not from just buying recycled items or a hybrid.
Plus I’m noticing it’s more chic to share, not at all embarrassing or “cheap”. It’s smart and does create community.
Thanks for this post!
June 29th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Sharing is a positive thing, but sadly, in the case of too many consumer products, it’s been pre-ordained that we NOT share. So many of the things that we have and use today bear their fate with them in that insidious little thing called DESIGNED OBSOLESCENCE. BECAUSE we don’t share, and so little is really demanded of the products that sit around our houses, they’ve been designed with an effective use-life. Hopefully if higher quality is mandated through a “sharing” culture, it will force the manufacture of better “STUFF.”
June 29th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
I live in Roanoke VA and though we are far from being sustainable, we do have a share bike system. The share bikes are bright yellow and we have places to rent them (cost free) for a day or hour all around downtown and our little communities. The problem is it can take guts for someone who thinks they have a high social standing to maintain confidence while riding on a bright yellow free bike around town.
Hopefully sharing won’t be taboo for much longer and everyone will take advantage of the resources we have in our own towns!
Kudos on Story of Stuff and the blog!
June 29th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
HOW GREEN IS YOUR VALLEY?
This the slogan I use to help spread the idea of reuse and recycle and recreate uses for our “stuff”
In an attempt to save some $$ on materials, I thought I’d use what I had on hand. What seemed to grow like fungus were magazines.
They are not only great medium for collage art but have helped reinvent uses for other containers that food normally gets packaged in.
Round Oatmeal containers decorated with magazine pictures and white glue create wonderful permanent boxes for gifts or for memorabilia storage.( I typed a special note on the base…”please do not discard…gift it forward”
Attaching several boxes together made a great toy train for my grandson….he picked out the pictures he wanted as passengers and each time he uses it…he will remember our fun time making it…
The uses of what we have normally thought of as garbage is limited only by our passion to reuse and our desire to recycle.
The local county fair(Queens County Farm Museum) is giving me a table again this year to teach others to do the same. It is one of the most popular exhibits. Kids flock to my table.
The children love to use the cut out pictures from discarded children books. (pre cut..one of my hobbies..while I watch tv I cut pictures)
They make up new stories with construction paper and glue. It only takes a minute and their imagination to get them involved and interested.
Once they “get it” they will pass the passion on to their peers…and so on….It is after all their world.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:24 am
Hi
I work at a Uni too and am looking at ways to make the place more ’sustainable’. i was interested in your comments – any advice?
Regards
rosie
July 14th, 2009 at 3:44 am
In Arundel (England) we are also trying to extend the the idea of sharing, I share a car with neighbours and garden tools including a shredder which I only use once or twice a year. When you look at the short amount of time electric tools are used per household it makes perfect sense and my shed is much emptier, there is room to get in it!
September 9th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
They made a good point in that we are embarassed to ask a neighbor to use there stuff so we all have everything that is needed for a household instead of getting together and everone on the block agree to use eachothers stuff and cut down on cost. I’m going to have to try this and also I’m going to have to check out this book they are talking about.
September 18th, 2009 at 8:52 am
I need to tell you what I feel, what I think, what I FEAR for our own future, for the future of our little ones. It´s not enough to change “some” things in this “necrotic” system… We have to change most EVERYTHING if we wish a better future for our own children… please…!!! In the U.S.A. as in Canada, Europe, Japan, China and all the developed countries, the present culture of ilimited consuming habits has to be radically changed to the opposite culture of total AUSTERITY.
I think it’s time for all humankind to be conscious about reality. It’s not possible to go on with this irrational level of industrialization.
Humankind MUST STOP making so many frivolous and unnecessary luxurious products, all dispensable in this necrotic system of ilimited consumption. Our very toxic and contaminating garbage is growing in exponential degree, as well as human population does. Neverending contamination…!!!
Natural resources will soon be exhausted, so the logical reaction SHOULD BE to walk back the same way that brought us all up to this irrational point of neverending consumption.
DECREASE IS one of the two alternatives we have, but the ONLY LOGICAL ALTERNATIVE that IS LEFT in this PATHETIC REALITY that INVOLVES US ALL. The another one is to go on in the same very dramatically wrong way we are since ever.
Industrialization has to DIMINISH to the minimun necessary and vital level.
It’s needed a radical change in all steps of Education to provide the technical, mechanical, manual knowledge to go back to our grandparents’ times or to the style of the Amish people, in order to prepare our children to be able to get their own daily sustenance from mother earth, taking care of it naturally and without agrotoxical and chemical industrialized products. Familiar or community farms, with agricultural cooperatives in small communities should be encouraged to be done elsewhere for the self-sufficiency of goods and supplies. Recycling, restoration, recovering, reparing activities with manual and handicraft labours should be the alternative jobs in the near future for our children, activities of minimum fossil fuels requiry.
Please, do all what is possible for you to encourage the whole World to STOP PRODUCING cars, electronical supplies incompatible with new ones that forces people all around the world to buy new elements instead, luxurious materials, most everything no biodegradable and with very toxic components, etc.etc.etc. Industrialization should be diminished to its minimun necessary level!!!!!
Instead, it has to be produced all types of spare parts to recycle, restore, repare, recover all types of things that we have; all types of manual and mechanical elements must be produced for all types of jobs and labours of minimum fossil fuels requiry.
WE HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF THE LITTLE NATURAL RESOURCES THAT ARE STILL LEFT…
NO other alternative energy will be able to sustaine this irrational level of neverending consumption. It’s not enough to go on studying other alternative energies in this irrational and neverending necrotic system of insatiable industrialization.
We are all destroying our unique Planet, we are destroying LIFE elsewhere, contaminating water, air, soil, and intoxicating PEOPLE with MINING and AGRIBUSINESS activities.
Latinamerican people, the poor people of the Latinamerican Developing Countries, as well as the poor people in so many developing countries, are suffering since EVER in many ways because of long-term unemployment, intoxication, contamination, physical attacks to push them out of their ancestral lands and to be left excluded in poorer areas. All of our communities in Argentina are suffering the consequences of contamination of our soil, air, water natural resources with mining and agribusiness activities of multinational monopolies. Our yet fertile soils will become deserts in not so long term… What goes on in this world that is driven by selfish madness and ilimited greed of few people that have power…??? The Economic Power of the First World is taking out all our natural resources and destroying our ecosystems, killing LIFE in the vulnerable biodiversity, contaminating our water natural resources, our soil, intoxicating our people, etc.etc.etc.
GREED, SELFISHNESS, LIES, HYPOCRISY, are the values and principles that push people of economic power in the First World since ever.
This is the only truth that explains everything pretty much.
Whoever doesn’t want to see or understand this… it’s simply because he or she feels the same and shares with them the same purposes: to earn more and more BLOODSTAINED MONEY, to hoard PROPERTIES insatiably, etc.etc.etc.
We need to multiplicate our voices exponentially. We have to awaken more and more people all around the world from the basis of this feudal social pyramid. We need to be more and more people all around the World to take notice of this dramatic situation, that makes us feel this same anguish and distress in order to try to change this suicidal way straight to an abyss without return…
Please, you have to visit these other web sites for more information given by suitable professionals of all around the world.
http://www.crisisenergetica.org/
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/
http://oilsmokeandmirrors.com/
WE HAVE TO , WE NEED TO CHANGE THIS SUICIDAL WAY STRAIGHT TO AN ABYSS WITHOUT RETURN…!!!
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:44 pm
This is blatant propaganda! You should be ashamed feeding this pap to our children! Get your facts straight and stop with this socialistic, communist crap. Just go to Europe and see how oppressed they are (I lived there for years and moved to the US to have freedom of choice). Next, you will be telling us to “share” our homes that we have worked so hard for. TRY HONEST DISCOURSE FOR ONCE!
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:38 am
Get rid of all the frivolous lawsuits and the dispicable ambulance chasing attorney’s that make everyone paranoid to lend things to neighbors, like autos or ladders and maybe we could get somewhere on this topic.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:52 am
Here’s an idea for sharing. Why not stop all gov’t spending on replacement needle programs. That will get all the Junkies sharing again. Once they succumb to HIV and HEP C the market for poppies will dry up and there won’t be so much money going to Afghanistan to fund the insurgents.
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:41 am
This wonderful! We are a bunch of Americans living in Kuwait. I have seen this oil-rich country turn into like America’s consumption patterns…they have so much money! Our group shares books, clothes, and even funiture so we can do our bit! The government here DOES NOT even have a recycling system… they just go bury it in the desert and then 20 years from now they will build houses on it! In Kuwait if your car isnt the new Mercedes that was released than u turn ur old one in…a car! When i was growing up you kept your car until it doesn’t work no more! The car makers know this…BMW does a new look evey 5 years and Mercedes 7 years..something so silly such as the shape of the headlights…it is not necessarily better technology…but a visible change just like ur reference to skinny/fat shoes…It is all amazing! thank you for open my eyes…Patty
September 23rd, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Wow! Do you realize you are advocating the teachings of Karl Marx? “From each according to his ability. To each according to his need” is not an original concept. It has actually been tested throughout history and has failed wherever is has been tried. Please do not subject our country’s children to the lessons of a failed economic policy in the name of sustainability. It all sounds good, but it just plain doesn’t work.
September 24th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I love many of the things said here in support of our environment and I learn so much too. Thanks for sharing all these positive thoughts, it makes me so happy. I am excited to learn about co-operative housing. Thanks for sharing it Tree sap.:)
It sounds so good to live in a community esp. one which share the same passion for a greener earth.
I do know sharing things will inevitably brings out problem esp. if others are not responsible and honest. But I believe there is a way to work around that.
I have always wanted to organise car pooling or grouping kids to walk to school. It not only help the environment but also cut down school traffic, time, etc but find that parents are either too busy to reply to my request or couldn’t be bother. People seems to be getting so busy in their life and spend so little time on thinking about ways we could get together and help each other and our planet – it’s sad.
However, reading all these gives me hope and inspiration to try again. Thanks again.
September 26th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Hey why don’t we all just share our money .Our president would be so proud,so would Karl Marx,Hugo Chavez and every other crazy tin pot dictator in the world.Communism has been a complete failure every time it’s been tried.Our system has problems,they all do,but this crap!This is indoctrination,plain and simple.My children need to learn how to read,write,math at school not be filled with this.Folks it’s “We the People” not “We the Community!
October 4th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Janelle, coauthor of The Sharing Solution just wrote a nice piece on Shareable entitled “The Four Degrees of Sharing” here:
http://shareable.net/blog/four-degrees-of-sharing
It does a nice job of laying out the challenges and opportunities that sharing offer. And I just want to respond to some of the political rhetoric here – if people voluntarily share, if that’s their free choice, then it seems very much aligned with a free and democratic society.