The Gen Y Guide to Collaborative Consumption
03.08.11, 12:58pm Comments (16)
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Credit: Flickr Creative Commons - Marco Raaphorst

When our parents graduated from college, the bachelor’s degree was a coveted badge of honor. It gave applicants instant cred (and usually a larger paycheck) no matter what the job. Now, having a bachelor’s degree does nothing to make an applicant stand out from the masses. And if you’re applying for a job well below your skill level because you’re desperate for a paycheck, that B.S. degree will probably get your carefully crafted resume tossed in the trash.

American youth are slowly realizing that the old system is broken, and no longer holds the answer to all their dreams and desires. We’re discovering that stable, satisfying careers can be found outside the offices and factories around which our parents and grandparents built their lives. We’re acknowledging that the pursuit of bigger, better, and faster things have plunged our country into a time of despair and difficulty. We're convinced that business as usual isn’t an option any longer--but what's the alternative?

Together, we’re learning that instead of waiting for politicians and corporations to fix the system, it’s possible to create a better one of our own, right under their noses. A new way of living, in which access is valued over ownership, experience is valued over material possessions, and "mine" becomes “ours” so everyone's needs are met without waste.

If these ideas get your blood pumping, there’s good news: young people all over the world are already making them a reality. It’s called collaborative consumption, (or the sharing economy) and it’s changing the way we work, play, and interact with each other. It’s fueled by the instant connection and communication of the internet, yet it’s manifesting itself in interesting ways offline too.

If you’re ready to connect with people who can help you save money, pursue your passions, and reduce waste, here's a quick-start guide to your sharing experience:

1. Remove all items from the box and assess

Sit down with yourself (or some friends) and talk about what you’ve got, what you need, and what you could live without. Take stock of what you’d be willing to share, rent, or give away. Write down all the things you really need to be productive/happy/connected. Then, cross out all the things that you want just to have them, and highlight all the things that involve a valuable experience. Now you have a list you can tackle through sharing.

2. Connect to the power source

The collaborative consumption movement empowers people to thrive despite economic climate. Instead of looking to the government or corporations to tell us what we want or create a solution for our problems, we take action to meet our own needs in a creative fashion. This is our power source. Start looking for ways to share at school, on community billboards, by asking friends, or use the resources below (US-based unless noted otherwise):

Housing

Social Food

Personal Finance

  • Lending Club - An online financial community that brings together creditworthy borrowers and savvy investors so that both can benefit financially.
  • Zopa (UK) - Where people get together to lend and borrow money directly with each other, sidestepping the banks for a better deal.
  • Prosper - A peer-to-peer lending site that allows people to invest in each other in a way that is financially and socially rewarding.
  • SmartyPig - social savings bank that enables you to save for specific goals and engage friends and family to contribute.
  • How to Save Money by Sharing

Entrepreneurship / Work

Travel

  • CouchSurfing - An international network that connects travelers with free accommodations offered by locals in over 230 countries. There's no better way to immerse yourself in the local culture than to stay with an friendly local.
  • Airbnb - the leading a fee-based service that connects people who have space to share with travelers looking for lodging, all over the world. Also check out similar services iStopOver, Roomorama, and Tripping. Save a ton of money and connect to the local scene through these peer to peer lodging sites.
  • How To Swap Cities - a guide on how to swap offices with someone from another city inspired by SwapYourShop.
  • Try out Vayable or Guidehop for tours and experiences created by independent locals for those seeking authentic experiences.

Land / Gardening

Transportation

Media (Books, Movies, Games, Music)

  • Swap.com - The leading online swap marketplace for books, movies, music and games.  Amazing selection. Update: now swapping everything.
  • BookMooch - Lets you swap books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want.
  • Goozex - A trading platform for video games and movies.
  • Paperback Swap - Trade paperback books for free. Also DVDs and  CDs.

Clothing

Redistribution Sites (where unneeded stuff finds a loving home)

  • Freecycle - The original grassroots organization for giving and getting free stuff in your town.
  • Craigslist - This is the ultimate free classified site with categories for free stuff, shares, barters, sublets, garage sales, house swaps, tons of used stuff for sale, and more. New in town? You can set yourself up with a job, an apartment, furniture, and a date all from this site.
  • eBay - International online auction that allows you to buy from and sell to other individuals.
  • Try out Zaarly, a classified service optimized for smartphones.

Renting and sharing of general goods where you live

  • Rentalic, Neighborgoods, Keepio, SnapGoods and Zilok (US & Europe) are leading peer to peer rental and sharing marketplaces.
  • Do you want to co-own something with friends or family? Jointli and Sharezen are the perfect tools to buy, use, and manage a shared asset like cars, boats, planes, tools, real estate, and more.

Campus

  • Chegg - Rent expensive textbooks on the cheap.
  • Better World Books - Save big on used textbooks.
  • CafeScribe - A new service that lets you download electronic copies of your textbook, add friends, and share your notes.
  • GradeGuru - A leading student notesharing and social network.
  • Free Technology Academy - free college classes on open source technology and standards.
  • Open Courseware - free college course materials offered by scores of top universities from around the world. Also check out MIT's free classes.

Other Guides:

If you don't see the sharing solution you need, check out our huge list of how to share guides on Shareable.  Or add resources you know about in comments.

3. Press the power button

Once you discover local opportunities for sharing and collaborating, it’s time to add the power: you. Get involved. Create a profile on sharing/renting/bartering site and actually list some stuff you could trade. Contact the moderator of a local offline sharing group and offer up your goods or services. Collaborative consumption requires a venture into a social world, even if it's only online; you need to get out there.

4. Sync with other devices and enjoy

Ideas like eBay, Netflix, and GameFly are pretty well-known examples of sharing, but it's important to remember that options exist offline as well. Sure, the internet makes it safe for us to share with strangers, but that doesn't mean you should forget about the satisfaction of sharing face-to-face. Coworking brings collaboration into your professional life; a local food co-op brings sharing into your pantry, and skill-sharing communities bring comraderie to your weekend hobbies.

Don't be afraid to let sharing/bartering/collaborating go viral in other areas of your life as well. You'll discover, as Rachel Botsman does in What's Mine is Yours, that "over time, these experiences create a deep shift in consumer mindset. Consumption is no longer an asymmetrical activity of endless acquisition but a dynamic push and pull of giving and collaborating in order to get what you want. Along the way, the acts of collaboration and giving become an end in itself."

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This guide appears in the new Shareable ebook collection Share or Die, which is now available in downloadable and free online forms. For the next article in Share or Die, Arianna's "Stranger Dinners" click here.

collaborative consumption, how to share, Recession, Share or Die, sharing economy, social lending, youth
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Comments

Elena Milan wrote on 03.08.11, 12:40pm:

In the sharing goods category we can add the following link:
www.ecosharing.net

EcoSharing.net is the first sharing website that lets us share what we own with people we know and trust: our friends on facebook.

Beth Buczynski wrote on 03.08.11, 2:32pm:

Great suggestion Elena! Thanks :)

Jeremy Kester wrote on 03.09.11, 12:26pm:

I love shareable.net! So much good content here. This will definitely come in handy in the near future. I've had amazing experiences hosting couchsurfers...if you've lost your faith in humanity or feel like you're very close to loosing it, host a couchsurfer or be one! It will change your perspective.

Joseph wrote on 03.09.11, 9:13pm:

What about Avego for Realtime Ridesharing?

Annette Campbell wrote on 03.14.11, 2:22pm:

Another site with applications in all of these areas and even more: SplitStuff.com. This is a new site that makes it easy to organize local communities to buy in bulk and "split" the goods and the cost, thus reducing waste and unnecessary consumerism. The applications are extensive -- getting discounts on group classes, buying expensive equipment that can be used by various families, etc.

Annette

Boysen Hodgson wrote on 03.20.11, 9:56am:

Fantastic post. Great resources. And I have an additional offer. In order to build sustainable and lasting community / movements / co-working or co-housing arrangements ... the people involved have to have skills to handle personal and interpersonal conflict and work with each other to overcome obstacles to connection.

It takes a deep level of trust to establish successful community. The ManKind Project (http://mkp.org) has groups available to help men (who are often not as emotionally skilled as women) learn skills to make community work. I have been involved in this kind of work for 7 years and have seen it have significant life-changing impacts.

rckoegel wrote on 04.14.11, 3:06pm:

The ManKind Project, because of it's secrecy and various techniques, sounds like it functions far too much like an occult group. I highly recommend that no one participates in any program related to this organization.

Instead, take self improvement courses at your local community college. Most provide courses on self-esteem and interpersonal communication.

There are even alternative institutions that provide an educational approach to stopping the 'cycle' of anti-social, abusive, and violent behavior that plagues the lives of men. Look up Breakthrough Parenting, there's a branch in Seattle, WA. The main branch is in California. The classes these 'parenting' institutions provide are equally as beneficial to parents, and expecting parents, as the are for non-parents. [This is not meant to be an advertisement, just an example.]

The primary difference between these 'educational' programs and those that approach the problem with any sort of 'treatment' is that addressing it educationally allows for the students to learn the 'facts' of the matter and choose to change as they see fit, independently, willingly, and purposefully, while maintaining their sense of self worth and self control; while maintaining their dignity.

Whereas the 'treatment' approach often, if not always, attempts to coerce the participants into changing through the use of psychological manipulation and peer pressure--ironically these are the very tactics used to cause the problem in the first place. These tactics serve to violate the participants sense of self worth and self control; their dignity.

I've encountered 'treatment' facilities that actually direct their participants to 'give up control' to the facilitator, and just 'do what they are told' to complete the program.

And although these negative tactics are being intentionally used to solve a problem, it's become apparent that although they may solve that problem, they create yet another more complex and less identifiable problem in the previous problems stead.

A domestically violent man perpetrates acts that violate the dignity of others because they believe it is appropriate, mostly selfishly because they are taught to be controlling. The treatment centers they are sent to, and organizations like The ManKind Project (from what I read on their website), perpetrate acts that violate the dignity of these men also because they believe it is appropriate, mostly because they selfishly want to control these men in order to help others. To put it simply: their desire to help is honorable, but as long as they use any form of manipulation, rather than the blatant distribution of factual information, the way they do it is not.

Alice Mrongovius wrote on 04.29.11, 1:59am:

Great resource page, so inspiring feeling the groundswell of this movement! Thanks Annette for sharing spiltstuff.com, great concept. I wanted to add friendfund.com, we are a Berlin based startup, developing social group payments - (financial collaboration). It is great tool for chipping in for anything from a birthday present that someone actually wants (no more junk gifts) to help your community with grassroots project (like tugging a floating artspace to sea*).

Looking forward to more posts.

Alice
* this is actually happening

www.friendfund.com
@friendfund

Matthew wrote on 05.02.11, 5:53am:

I aggree with your statement about MKP. Their aggressive and manipulative stratagies beget aggressive, controling and manipulative behavior it is that simple. Men who enter who have these issues already end up trying to "help" others but that is merely a cover. Rollo May once pointed out that somethings which are done in the name of love are really a cover for violence.

Gracen Johnson wrote on 05.07.11, 12:47pm:

SO excited by Collab. Consumption! I’m part of an intense young entrepreneurship program in Canada (kind of like The Apprentice) and our team wanted to make this idea fly in the Great White North. We’ve created http://tradyo.com. I’d love your thoughts and suggestions (feedback bar on the righthand side).

It’s been a real thrill and pleasure to work on. I hope that we can boost the movement in Canada and beyond one day!

Thanks for the article,
Gracen

Neal Gorenflo wrote on 05.24.11, 8:02pm:

Here's a new one: peer-to-peer high-end camera sharing http://www.splitgear.com/

Nichola Torbett wrote on 06.13.11, 8:24am:

This is so wonderful to see. It's absolutely necessary if we are going to move toward more sustainability for the long term. AND I want to urge folks to remember that sharing via the Internet leaves out a whole swath of the population that doesn't have regular access, and those tend to be the people who have the least and could most benefit from being part of something like this. How can we build the f2f relationships locally so that this way of living is extended to people most college grads never encounter?

Daniel Cole wrote on 06.17.11, 6:36am:

Great post, it is awesome to see so many new companies joining the ranks to encourage sharing.

My company ToolSpinner.com will be launching in the fall and specializing in Tools for your home, lawn, and automobile.

There is so much space in this market, I hope that list grown 100 fold in the next 10 years.

Thanks for the article.
Daniel Cole

Clint Rowley wrote on 07.12.11, 2:01pm:

Agreed, a great post. It really gets you thinking about what you could do to start sharing. The idea of so much team work is inspiring!

Tommy Porter wrote on 07.29.11, 11:00am:

Sharing goods category should also include:
www.exchango.com

Exchango.com is another freecycle platform that redistributes goods from those that don't need them to those that do, both locally and across the US.

Daniel Cole wrote on 11.04.11, 9:13am:

ToolSpinner will be launching shortly addressing the DIY marketplace for tool rentals. We have a slightly different approach than others by focusing on a niche in that we set pricing.

This essay appears in Shareable's paperback Share or Die published by New Society, available from Amazon. Share or Die is also available for Kindle, iPad, and other e-readers. 

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