Sharing and Sustainability
I am a believer in the concept of sharing as a core tool to drive sustainability. Perhaps the most obvious manifestations that we’re starting to see today are in transportation: ride-sharing and, increasingly popular, car-sharing. I just can’t imagine living in a city like Washington DC, Boston or San Francisco and owning a car, but it would be great to have easy and inexpensive access to one when I was travelling outside of such a city and public transportation didn’t make sense.
Yet the idea goes beyond the realm of mobility. As “Story of Stuff” spokesperson Annie Leonard muses, “What if we all didn’t need our own crème brulee blowtorches? What if we could just borrow one from our local library?”
And here’s a concept, Peer.org, that my friend Brandi Veil sent me just now, that I’d like to “share” on her behalf.
What is sustainability truly outside of keywords and tags? The core meaning is to sustain. How can we sustain the earth without sustaining our self first? My practice as a consultant is to focus on educating the individual in order for them to educate others and so on. It is important that we recognize that SHARNG has an frequency of life that vibrates differently than most commercial exchange. Ultimately, we have all heard sharing is caring, sharing is not only caring it is good for the environment on a micro to macro level– less waste and less consumption, more reuse, recycled and cycling-up products and services. Now with technology, we see collaborative consumption groups sharing more, timebanking labor and crowd sourcing talent without big corps ruling the industry. Sharing allows for a “True Value” marketplace vs “market value” and leaves it up to traders privately trading. My prediction is that we move into a global commerce using the new technology “shared economy” for fair trade local to global and eventually will have big corps wanting to know how to get into the market place. Its time for a paradigm shift in the world and I believe sharing and tracking with alternative currencies and community currencies are allowing for this to take place. Thank you. #brandiveil #peersdinner @brandiveil