Products You Can Share With Others To Reduce Consumption And Waste.
Modern society comes with a lot of “I need it’s”, doesn’t it? Everywhere you look, television, billboards, magazines, newspapers and radios try to tell us what we need to buy and consume in order to be happy. The marketers are very good at their jobs, and every single one of us falls for it at some point or another no matter how hard we try to avoid it. The gross over-consumption throughout the world is filling our landfills and recycling bins with unnecessary waste. So what is one thing that we, as average people here on the planet, do to help each other avoid the endless stream of goods that we are being sold?
Start sharing.
While we cannot share a roll of paper towels, a television or our couches, there are some major purchases that can be shared amongst neighborhood friends or family members. When I was growing up, two of my neighbors shared a snowblower each winter. One of them kept it at their house, but each time there was a snow storm they each got their chance to use it. Snowblowers were very expensive back then (they aren’t that cheap now, either) and were not used all that often – so it was the perfect “sharing” appliance. By sharing they also kept one more snowblower from being made, bought, and maintained – imagine if families in every neighborhood could share major purchases like that? Remembering this from when I was kid got me wondering about what other products could be a shared financial burden between families while also effectively reducing our consumption, waste, and raw materials cost…and this is what I came up with:
- Snowblowers, of course. These could be shared by several different families, not just two.
- Lawnmowers
- Garden tools like shovels, hoes, rakes
- Tree trimmers
- Chainsaws, weed eaters
- A Pool
- Sports equipment
- Camping equipment
- Magazine subscriptions
- Books
These are just a few of the things off the top of my head that could be comfortably shared between friends and/or neighbors to both save money for people and reduce consumption and waste throughout so many levels of society. What do you think…could you share some of these things with your neighbor to save some cash and reduce your trash? If I had neighbors I liked or even talked to here where we live, I would certainly consider it…maybe someday when I have neighbors I speak with, I can convince them that sharing a lawnmower can do a world of good!
Image by Laertes
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We were just about to run to the store to buy something to help us dig up roots in the yard this weekend when my next door neighbor came over with the perfect tool. It did the trick and saved us the expense of buying a tool we’d only use once or twice. For once, I was glad that she’s something of a busy body. If she hadn’t been watching us struggle we would have bought something new that wasn’t really needed.
Sometimes the busy bodies pay off! That was nice of her to save you some money
we share our gardening supplies and lawnmower with our neighbors/co-tenants across the street. we all have a key to the shed in their backyard.
our city has taken it one step further with a community tool shed–for a $5/year membership fee, you can borrow larger tools like rototillers, power saws, etc…stuff you would rarely use if you had your own. it’s like a library but with tools. imagine if every town had a community tool shed!
That’s fantastic Maria, every community should have something like that. I will make it a point to start something like that in the next city I live in!
I know you lived in Boston like I did. In two feet of snow you really want to be coordinating snow blower sharing? It seems to me that you have to be time-sensitive with that to catch it before it freezes. I can’t imagine how those people did it successfully. It sounds like it would be difficult.
They did it the entire time from when I was old enough to notice to when one of them moved away when I was 20, so it worked out fine.
That’s kind of funny, because lazy man makes the very argument that does (but doesn’t have to) keep ideas like this from catching on.
“What if by sharing (or carpooling, for example), I can’t instantaneously get what’s mine or have 100% autonomy in how I can use it?!?”
Really, I am worried about what kind of monsters we’ve created with the instant-gratification and use-once-and-dispose culture that we embrace so handily. These are not major sacrifices.
Yes, I think this is a great idea. Zipcar is very big in Portland, and I understand is growing alot on the “college campus scene”. I haven’t tried it out yet, but plan to…
here’s their site:
http://www.zipcar.com/