Facing the future: sustainability means sharing

Benita Matofska

14 February 2013

I personally save £20,000 a year through sharing. From clothes swapping, to childcare sharing and house swapping for our family holiday, the sharing of resources is not only necessary in tough economic times but it's the activity that will solve our resource crisis.

Benita Matofska

Guest writer Benita Matofska, Founder and Chief Sharer of The People Who Share, in the second of three articles, describes how the sharing economy is taking shape. You can read part one of her series 'Facing the Future' here.

Sharing = Sustainability

Experts predict that if we continue consuming as we are, our resources will be used up within 55 years. A business can no longer claim to be committed to sustainability unless it is contributing to the emergent sharing economy.

This isn't some hippy pipedream. Here's what sharing does:

Sharing Feeds

Last year the UK charity FareShare delivered 9 million meals that would otherwise have gone to landfill to those living in food poverty in the UK.

Sharing Clothes

High street retailer Marks & Spencer has so far diverted 2 million items of clothing from landfill and raised £1.5 million for Oxfam via their Shwopping campaign. H&M recently launched their global clothes recycling initiative, demonstrating that retailers are recognising the need to close the circle.

Sharing Educates

Tutudesk has distributed over 1 million portable school desks to children in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Sharing Employs

Sharing is becoming a business proposition.

BlaBlacar, a ride-sharing service with 2 million members in 5 countries enables people to share transport costs and reduce car use and ownership. With Airbnb, recently valued at $1.3 billion, people can make and save money by sharing their properties giving access to cheaper and less impactful travel. Through Ecomodo, a UK-based company, users can lend or borrow items and either make extra cash or give the proceeds to good causes.

In 2011, $400 million was invested in these new business models and the 2012 figures are likely to be much higher.

With 1.6 trillion worth of unused items in homes in the developed world, 500,000 tonnes of clothing and mountains of perfectly good food going to landfill every year, and many buildings standing empty, sharing can provide a simple solution to our global crisis.

There's nothing hippy about that.

Benita Matofska spent 20 years in broadcasting before becoming the Founder and Chief Sharer of The People Who Share, a campaign to build a sharing economy, and compareandshare.com. She has been invited to speak at TEDx, Guardian Social Enterprise Summit, Global Entrepreneurship Congress, BBC Worldwide TV, Sustainable Brands, the House of Commons and Number 10 Downing Street.

The views expressed in this article may not be those of Friends of the Earth