Do You Know Collaborative Consumption?
Bonding over dinner or helping a neighbor to start a project are two examples of a small-scale sharing economy.
The collaborative consumption empowers us as citizens because, with the support of modern technology, we can share simply and efficiently what we have and what we do.
New technologies offer new ways to meet our needs.
The new intermediaries have their own names: BlaBlaCar (a car-sharing website), Etsy (buying and selling handmade items), Kickstarter (supporting creative projects) …
But if we talk about empowering ourselves, does it make sense that we end up depending on a few companies?
In the collaborative economy phase in which we find ourselves, it is convenient to have references that allow us to explain, in a simple way, what the paradigm shift means. These companies are also to be thanked for leading the way in the field of public regulation.
Collaborate in the immediate environment
However, we must maintain a critical attitude towards those corporations that end up concentrating most of the exchanges in their sector and that, due to their scale, lose or greatly limit the human factor in bartering.
Most of us, on a normal day, are no more than 30 or 40 kilometers from where we live. Being aware of this reality, perhaps we should think about how collaborative consumption initiatives can help to unite neighborhoods in an increasingly individualistic society.
I would like to highlight a couple of projects that work on this scale.
Share plate: sharing economy around a table
Gracia Sola, community manager of Compartoplato.es in Spain, comments that the idea was born in Marieke Hart’s garden when she got the smell of the delicious food that her neighbor was cooking. He knocked on her door and proposed the idea of sharing. Before long, the entire neighborhood was participating in this experience.
To do it in an easier, faster and more efficient way, Marieke decided to create a website called Shareyourmeal.net. The operation is very simple: you can see online what your neighbors are cooking and try it for a small price per portion (in principle, that of the ingredients). Participation in Shareplato.es, whether you are a diner or a cook, is completely free.
The organization behind this website has a social character, it does not seek to maximize economic benefits, but rather the social benefits of sharing food. He arrived in Spain in early 2014 and is gaining popularity week by week.
Goteo.org: collective financing of nearby projects for the common good
The crowdfunding mechanism to carry out projects of all kinds is well known. What is not so well known are those collective financing platforms focused on the development of proximity projects : expanding the bookstore, a new oven for the restaurant, developing an urban garden … In other countries, Neighbor.ly, Bulbintown.com stand out. or CitizInvestor.com.
In Spain, Goteo.org is the platform that most closely approximates the concept of civic crowdfunding. It promotes free and open projects that are committed to the common good, open source and free knowledge, emphasizing public mission and social development.
It has collaborated with regional governments, universities and foundations in the creation of social investment exchanges and received, in 2014, the European Civic Forum award for NGO of the Year.
The collaborative consumption can be a transformation tool with which we must experiment to find the best way to use it for the benefit of all. Slowly but surely.
