Last night the team headed up to San Francisco’s Hub in SOMA for a talk and panel discussion featuring Rachel Botsman (@rachelbotsman), one of the authors of “What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise Of Collaborative Consumption”. The basic idea is that there’s a new movement towards sharing, reusing, trading and renting instead of simply consuming. The panel consisted of companies like Airbnb (rent out your room), Lending Club (lend money to other people and get higher returns) and Zimride (have an empty seat in your car? carpool) who are all in favor of this movement.
Before arriving I didn’t really know what to expect from the planned 2 hour discussion, but the main idea was quickly demonstrated as I passed my wedding ring to the person on my right so she could hold onto it for the duration of the talk. Rachel spoke about the different avenues within collaborative consumption and the one that hit home for us is swapping. Listia is a great solution for people to get rid of stuff to someone who wants it and get something in return. If you think about all the stuff you have in your home you’ll probably realize you don’t need a vast majority of the things you own. Try it … go to a room in your house, do a full circle and count everything you haven’t touched in the last 3 months … you’ll be surprised.
10 years ago what would you do with all that stuff? You might try to find a friend that needs it, give it to Goodwill, leave it on the curb with a sign that says “for free” or in the worst and probably most common case you end up throwing all that stuff away. At Listia we’re trying to solve all of this by connecting you with someone that wants your stuff and at the same time giving you something in return. Most importantly it helps people find a home for the stuff that would have ended up in the trash and in our landfills. With that said I would like to personally thank our users for being a great part of this movement even if you don’t even realize it. Consume less, share more. Listia is really looking forward to see where this new movement is headed and we’re happy to be able to provide the service that we do for our users.
If this subject matter interests you feel free to check out collaborativeconsumption.com for more info.
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