Become a Waste Watcher

wehatetowaste.com

We stumbled upon an interesting story of collaboration this week – writers Jacquie Ottman and Jocelyn Deprez have gathered people together to share their stories of reducing waste in hopes that a shared story will inspire action.  Jacquie started a blog to create culture change around waste…

“Her goal is to empower ardent waste watchers to share the many ways they reduce waste in their lives, and to provide insights into new products, services and behaviors that can help all consumers use less waste.”

Jacquie writes about ways to reuse items, ideas for reducing waste through sharing, how less can really be more, travelling, conservation and many more topics.  We thought we’d share one story in hopes that you’ll go read more…

Let’s Collaborate! Sharing as an Antidote to Waste

December 19, 2012 by Melissa OYoung

Lucy twirled around in a flamboyant red dress, struck a pose, and laughed. Lucy was new to London and was trying on a dress at a clothes swapping Swishing party. She loved these parties as she made new friends and could swap clothes she didn’t need anymore with other women. Little did she know she was helping reduce waste and part of a growing movement called collaborative consumption…

Introducing Collaborative Consumption – how wonderful!
Have a look around your home and think about all the things that are ‘wasted’ by not being used. In the US, 80% of items people own are used less than once a month. Waste isn’t just constrained to the garbage you might see on the street – think about the car which is sitting idle on average 23 hours a day or the power drill which is only used between 6-13 minutes of its lifetime. These items can definitely be used more – what a waste!

Collaborative consumption is a term to describe the renting, sharing, and swapping of underutilized assets. The Internet has now allowed people to connect and collaborate in ways not possible before – ‘wasting assets’ can be used more efficiently by linking those who own things with those who want access to them.

Take for example, cars. If you don’t want the burden of owning a car, you can use a car-sharing service like Relayrides (every shared car equates to taking 20 off the road!). Do you ever look at the empty car seats you see on roads and wonder whether you could rideshare to your destination? Carpooling.com helps facilitate 1 million rideshares per month.

Have clothes you don’t like anymore? Don’t throw them away! Use a clothes swapping site like ClosetDash which helps prevent clothes from ending up in landfill (and takes up to 400 years to decompose). Collaborative consumption isn’t constrained to just products – it can include things like time, space, skills, or money. Have amazing cooking skills that are just waiting to be shared? Don’t waste your talent! Teach a class on Skillshare and share your skills with your community.

Imagine a more Collaborative World
Imagine a future where sharing helps lead to a more sustainable world … Picture lawnmowers and tools being shared via a shared toolshed on each street or unwanted furniture reused and refurbished in new homes or offices. People having joint meals together through sites like Grub with us or using bike-sharing schemes to get to places instead of cars. There are many things that can be shared!

‘Lucy’ who is helping reduce waste by clothes swapping is actually a real person that I researched and represents many of the girls who are joining the clothes swapping movement today. I was fascinated with how these platforms could indirectly lead to people consuming more sustainably, which led to me writing my thesis on the topic.

My passion for collaborative consumption still remains and I’ve started Let’s Collaborate!, a collaborative consumption event series in New York to inspire and connect entrepreneurs, academics, VCs, and all people interested in the movement together. Through gathering people together, and raising thought-provoking debates, I hope to infect the greater community toward more collaborative, sustainable behaviors.

There is such delight from sharing, lending, or borrowing things – enjoyable experiences that can help reduce waste! Do you have ideas on how we can reduce waste by sharing? Please share your ideas in the comments below!

Open Source

Hello No Waste Wednesday-ers and welcome to 2013!
We’ve been on a little break in these parts but are eager to start up again for another year.

This month we are coming back to our January theme of collaboration and the many benefits associated with it, environmental and beyond…
Check back to our 2011 or 2012 series for posts on collaborative consumption, carrot mobs, skill sharing, etc.

This week we wanted to draw your attention to an incredible initiative called open source ecology:

Open Source Ecology

Open Source Ecology is a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters that for the last two years has been creating the Global Village Construction Set, an open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts.

The GVCS lowers the barriers to entry into farming,building, and manufacturing and can be seen as a life-size lego-like set of modular tools that can create entire economies, whether in rural Missouri, where the project was founded, in urban redevelopment, or in the developing world.

You can check out the TED Talk by founder and director, Marcin Jakubowski to hear more or head to their website to peruse the many design plans to build your own technologies that make small or large scale farming more accessible…

Man Vs. Debt

Our theme this month is on collaboration – innovative ideas of people coming together to make the earth a better place, waste less or somehow challenge the overuse of resources.

Today we are exploring the radical life decision of Adam Baker, and the community surrounding him, who decided to sell everything he owned to pay off his family’s consumer debt and live a life where he can make decisions based on what he cares about.

We hear a lot of people say that they can’t afford to care for the environment, buy organic, shop fair-trade or spare time to compost/garden or ride their bikes.  However, it is sometimes difficult to look at our own lives, habits and priorities with an objective perspective to evaluate where we could actually make small, positive changes.  The temptation seems to be to buy cheaply made, one-time use items which are not necessarily in line with our ethics but are super convenient and affordable.

Yet more stuff in your life will not grant you happiness and ultimately often ends up overcrowding the local landfill.  Check out Adam’s Ted Talk on “Doing What You Love”…

Of course not everyone can take such drastic measures to change their lifestyle but each one of us is able to make a changes happen when we want to.  So gather a few friends, decide what you each could change in your lives to reduce your waste, increase your health or somehow make the earth a better place… and take action as a group!  Support and accountability can take us a long way.

Read more about Adam “man vs. debt” here.