I wrote a piece for Shareable entitled The Four Degrees of Sharing, which I see as a sharing manifesto of sorts.  I give examples of the ways people are taking sharing to new levels, creating new organizations around sharing, establishing community-wide sharing programs, and cooperating in new and amazing ways.  Emily Doskow and I will regularly contribute articles and a Q&A column. If you have any sharing questions, please send them to us!

Shareable is sponsored by non-profit Tides Center.  The publisher, Neal Gorenflo, and editor, Jeremy Adam Smith, are social entrepreneurs and visionaries. They have created an amazing space to grow the sharing revolution!

By dividing literally hundreds of plants and giving them away to good homes, my mom gives her garden really good karma. I mean, look at at it:

I also read a heart-warming story about a woman in North Carolina who grew 2000 vegetable starts to give away, after learning that many local families were struggling to put food on the table as a result of the recession. First, she put out the word on the Internet and got a ton of seeds donated. She started them in small pots, then had an event to hand them out. She gave them to anyone, on the condition that they also share the harvest. Great way to spread the sharing spirit! She literally planted the seeds of sharing in the community – I love it!
By the way, if you want to do something for Climate Action Day, giving out tons of seedlings is an idea!

This is Frugal Foodies, a Bay Area group that brings people together to cook and eat in community. Founded by J Moses Ceasar in 2005, Frugal Foodies has thrived since then in Berkeley and San Jose. Menus vary (according to the site’s blog, a recent evening was an experiment in veganism) but are always vegetarian and mostly organic.

My friend Margaret went a couple weeks ago and came back glowing with great things to say about how it works and how much fun she had. I hope to try it soon and report back on another fun way to share food.

That’s better.

We are on the brink of something exciting, something with the power to transform our world. I love to imagine the near future, when people everywhere share cars with their neighbors, start local tool-lending libraries and childcare cooperatives, do regular mealsharing with friends, and form casual cohousing arrangements in every neighborhood. What’s more, the value of all of these things is somehow greater than the sum of their parts, and the potential of it all makes me gasp.

First of all, I’ve seen all those tiny green sprouts popping up all over the place. They are everywhere: sprouts of hope, new technologies, new attitudes, social justice,green collar jobs, and community building. They are sprouts of community gardens,solar panels, bicycle lanes, buy-local initiatives, recycling programs, fair trade,microlending programs, restored creeks, and so many other beautiful things.

Okay, granted, there’s a huge grey cloud making it hard to see these little sprouts. It’s true that the economy, the environment, war, unemployment, evictions, foreclosures, homelessness, contamination, water shortages, businesses closing, and the disappearance of fish in the sea, to name a few, make for one very large grey cloud(VERY LARGE GREY CLOUD).

But the sprouts are most definitely there. What I’m wondering is: When are these sprouts going to grow enough to overtake the grey cloud? Seems to me that if they grow just enough, they’ll create fertile ground for more growth, and more, and more! But for now, their growth is frustratingly slow. Too slow?

I could think of ways to speed them up, but many ways require change mostly beyond my control. There are top-down changes, like getting the government to put money into green-collar job creation, instead of, say, prisons. But I’m not holding my breath — and I’m not expecting our government to catalyze the growth of the sustainability movement (though I truly appreciate that our President is on the right track).

What about all those millions of people with wonderful ideas, great intentions, and the will to change the world? The grassroots! Couldn’t they (I mean, we) get this new green revolution going? Unfortunately, with the way things are going, I’m worried that we won’t. So many of us are overworked, burnt out, struggling to make ends meet, and worried a lot about our own survival right now. It’s not easy contending with a large grey cloud.

But I only say all this to emphasize the importance of the missing ingredient: Sharing! Or, perhaps I should say: SHARING! Sharing has the most potential to add momentum to the changes already taking place, getting us to the tipping point where a sustainable and socially just world is truly possible. Sharing is not just the fertilizer that helps those green sprouts grow bigger. Sharing is more like a catalyst — one small ingredient that you can add to the mix that makes everything just explode.

The power of sharing is unique in a handful of ways:

• Sharing, unlike recycling, is naturally contagious. Sharing opens up a pattern of generosity and mutual caring that breeds on itself. A lot of other things we do to change the world aren’t quite so viral. One person reducing his or her waste, for example, may or may not inspire a neighbor to do so. But offering to let your neighbor use your basketball hoop or eat strawberries from your patch opens up the flood gates of generosity.
• Sharing is self-serving, so we’ll want to do it. Sharing helps us meet our needs more efficiently and cheaply, and sharing our snow blower with a neighbor might mean that she will let us use her hot tub. (Yessss!) Sharing builds community, which makes us happier people, and cooperation has been shown to release endorphins. So there’s no need to force anyone to share — people will naturally start doing it to enjoy the benefits.
• Sharing reverses the drain on our time, energy, and resources. For those of us who are spread way too thin, sharing saves resources, money, time, and energy, thereby freeing us up to garden, compost, recycle, hang our laundry, ride our bicycle, volunteer, advocate for social and environmental justice, and do things to help ourselves and the planet. We’ll all get a little more rest, the support of a community of sharers, and the strength we need to get all the sprouts growing. In short, sharing gives the grassroots the time, energy, and resources we need to grow a better world.
• Sharing connects all of our isolated world-changing acts and boosts their potential. As I noted, the sprouts are everywhere — people planting urban food gardens, composting their food waste, and installing solar panels. But many of these are things we do in isolation — and when we can find the time and energy. Sharing adds the element of community, which boosts the potential and the impact of everything we do — neighbors can get together to jointly purchase or bargain for solar power, or they can start a neighborhood compost project. It’s more efficient, and each additional person who joins the effort compounds the benefit to the earth and to the others in the group. Much of what we do to save the world can be done better if we organize and cooperate, and it can be much more fun that way, too!
• We don’t have to wait for someone else to hurry up and do anything. We don’t have to wait until our government starts a new program or provides needed funding. We don’t need to change the laws. We don’t have to wait until a scientist invents a solution. We don’t even need to form a nonprofit orfundraise to get started. We just start sharing. Today.
• Every single one of us can share. I’ve been known to say things like: “I can’t afford to make a donation;” “I don’t have time to volunteer more;” and “I don’t know how to install solar panels.” It’s all true. But it’s hard to say, “I can’t afford to share,” or “I don’t have time to share,” or “I don’t know how to share.” Sharing is something that everyone can do. Even a curmudgeon, even a poor person, even a busy person. I think the hardest part is getting started, then ironing out the details, understanding everyone’s expectations, and figuring out the logistics. But my friend Emily Doskow and I just wrote a book to help everyone through that part. So otherwise, there’s nothing stopping any of us from sharing.
• Sharing is a clean and easy way to get rid of the big grey cloud. Somehow or another, we need to get rid of that cloud. Otherwise our future looks like, well, a big grey cloud. There are all kinds of approaches to this — some folksreform the system, lobbying, advocating, and making changes bit-by-bit. This is an important thing to do, but it’s way too slow. Others propose bringing down the system in one fell swoop, which usually involves an uprising, or a full-blown violent revolution. I can only imagine that this would be messy. Very messy. The system has very large weapons, and even if we do succeed in taking out the system, we will then be faced with the task of rebuilding something on top of a big mess. Fortunately, we really don’t need to remove the system before we can start replacing it. Even while the grey cloud is still hanging out, we can start sharing, nourishing our local economies, going organic, and creating rewarding green-collar job opportunities. The spouts of our new system will simply overtake the cloud with time.

First, there’s the “grow or die” economy — where companies must compete in order to survive, grow in order to compete, and create increasing demand for their products in order to grow. And the best way for a company to sell a lot of a product is to create a culture of “self-reliance” and “convenience,” convincing all people that they should have one of their OWN. This culture of “self-reliance” is so ingrained in us that it would feel awkward asking the guy in the neighboring apartment unit if he would like to share a vacuum cleaner. Vacuum manufacturers would want us to believe that we should each have a vacuum, or even two.

Second, there’s the fact that, until recently, we could maintain this lifestyle without actually seeing the impact of it. Now we have seen how perpetual growth is eating away at the planet’s natural resources, melting the icecaps, and undermining a stable economy. Now the images of factory farms and third world sweatshops have made their way into our minds, and we are all searching for a more compassionate and sustainable way.

In the meantime, we have gotten out of practice with sharing. Sharing and cooperation are arguably as old as civilization itself. But today, much of the sharing and cooperation we do are managed by the government or businesses via incredibly complex systems of global cooperation. As consumers, we mostly just experience the end-products, such as electricity, water, manufactured goods, and food. So while we benefit greatly from cooperation, we have lost the ability to do it directly and face-to-face. In this sense, we are a vulnerable culture. We are blinded to the harms that our consumption inflicts on the world, and we are not prepared to meet our needs if or when the complex system crumbles.

So we might as well roll up our sleeves now, gather our friends, family, and neighbors, and get creative. Solar power cooperatives, neighborhood rainwater catchment installations, a cooperatively owned water purification system, community supported agriculture, neighborhood fruit tree harvests… The possibilities are endless and they will completely transform our world. That’s why it’s a sharing revolution. Not a trend, not a movement, but a REVOLUTION. Goodbye grey cloud. Sharing is here to save the planet.

Other states are sharing, too. In New Jersey, one county closed its juvenile detention facility, saving millions, and sent the detainees to a neighboring county. In Missouri and Pennsylvania, cities and boroughs voted to consolidate into other counties or towns to save money on services that otherwise would be duplicated. As the economy continues to struggle, we feel sure more and more people, organizations, and entities will catch on to the sharing solution

It would be wonderful for every community to have a public sewing workshop. It would encourage people to repair damaged clothing rather than throw it away. It would also help us all develop our skills, give us a space to socialize with others, and save many resources — both personally and for the planet.

Along the same lines, it would also be great if every community had:

• A public woodworking shop
• A welding center where anyone can go to repair broken metal items
• A bike repair station where we can use specialized tools to repair our own bikes, like the Missing Link in Berkeley, where I once replaced my brakes
• A place where we can go learn about and change our own car oil, transmission fluid, and so on
• A tool lending library
• Large commercial-scale kitchens that people could use for the day if they are helping to cater a one-time event or do a fundraising bake sale. Shared kitchens, such as Kitchen Chicago are also great for small-scale food enterprises.

There are probably plenty of other great ideas along these same lines. If you have any ideas or would like to tell us about a cool community program of this sort, please email us at sharing (at) janelleorsi (dot) com. Thanks!

The Zero Waste Movement has come to the Bay Area and it calls for a new use for these eight cages. Here are my suggestions:

1. Turn two of those cages into compost bins. Fill one with grass, leaves, and vegetable scraps, let it decompose for six months, then start filling the second bin in the meantime.
2. Put in a green can, which is what Oakland uses to collect milk cartons, pizza boxes, yard trimmings, and all food to send it to the municipal composting facility. If your city doesn’t do this yet, tell them it’s a great idea and they could be as cool and cutting edge as Oakland.
3. Put in one or two recycling cans for glass, plastic, cardboard, paper, aluminum, etc.
4. Put out a FREE STUFF box for unwanted clothing and household items. The neighbors could sort through it each week, and later put it out on the curb for passers-by to explore. Take what’s left to Goodwill or a comparable donation spot.
5. Put in a few small bins for various items that can be recycled, such asbatteries and electronics, which can then be taken to an electronics recycling center every month or two. Styrofoam can be brought to a local packaging store or ceramics business that accepts used packaging material. Or, if you accumulate a bunch of plastic bags,take them to a store or to some other place that accepts used ones.
6. Put in ONE trash can. By the time you compost, recycle, re-use, redistribute, and take a few other measures to reduce your waste, you’ll have almost no trash each week.
7. Install a bicycle rack or locked bicycle cage.
8. With the leftover space, put in a container garden and a bench where neighbors can gather and chat. A much more pleasant alternative to the garbage can jailhouse ambiance, wouldn’t you agree?

First, there’s SwapTree, where you can obtain free books, DVDs, music, and video games from others by offering things of your own to swap. And while the word “swap” may conjure up an image of a two-way exchange, a more sophisticated “swap” might look more like this: Bradley receives a book from Max, who receives a CD from Reggie, who receives a DVD from Susan, who receives a video game from Bradley, and so on. With SwapTree, you enter information about items you have to offer, and click on items you’d like to receive, and you are then presented with a list of all the items you could potentially receive in exchange. When a swap is confirmed, SwapTree sends you a mailing label with the recipient’s address and pre-calculated postage (which can be quite cheap using the media mail rate). You don’t even have to go to the Post Office. In the meantime, you wait for your new goodies to arrive.

Another potentially useful website, in beta stages of development, is Lend Around. This is a system to allow you to lend items to friends, keep track of where they are, and easily find out what your friends have that you can borrow. Right now, LendAround members can lend and borrow DVDs, but it sounds like there’s plan for expanding the categories of borrowed items.

What I’d love to see is a website where neighbors or friends can create a network and post all types of household items they own and are willing loan to others. This could include tools, appliances, electronics, sporting equipment, and so on. It could even include immobile items, such as a hot tub. The owner of the hot tub could indicate when they are willing to let others use the tub, and people could schedule use of it with the website. If you know of such a site or are planning on starting one of your own, I’d love to hear about it: you can email me at sharing (at) janelleorsi (dot) com.