"Sustainability" is about green building, conservation, recycling, renewable energy and the environment - right?
Of course. But there's more.
"Sustainability" is also about our overall norms and habits as a society (I'm not just talking about recycling or conservation). One habit, the habit of "sharing" might, in fact, be one of the most important habits of all in our effort to ensure the health of our economy and to secure the future for our planet.
What?!? - Sharing?
How fluffy. How idealistic. How counter-culture to everything we know... At least it's going to be an inconvenient sacrifice - Right?
I don't think so.
#1) It's an Imperative
#2) There's Huge Upside Opportunity (eg. Collaborative Consumption)
#3) It's Actually Good for Us
1 - The Imperative:
There are plenty of studies indicating that our current pace of ownership and consumption will "break" the planet. Our habits are simply not sustainable.
The rise and fall of the Roman Empire is an 'oft sited example (of many things) with multiple theories about how and why the Empire collapsed. No matter the debate, most historians agree that the prosperous self-indulgent Empire had a fundamentally unsustainable societal foundation - at least for the long term.
In our case now, if we don't change our habits we won't just see an "empire" fall, we'll see a planet and it's people become history (literally).
Doomsday? Dramatic? Maybe. Whether you think it's alarmist or not, let's say there's even a small chance that we cook everyone and everything - is that a risk worth taking? After all, it takes approximately 22 million years to get to the next nearest Earth-like planet, Kepler 22b. So, we would need to either:
A) Figure out how to live for 22 million years
B) Invent a faster way to travel in space
C) Change our habits
2 - The Upside Opportunity:
The good news is that in addition to green building, recycling, and all the great things we're beginning to do, we have a huge opportunity to do even more given the immense surplus and redundancy we still have in our society, from the stuff we buy, to the space we use (or the space we don't use in order to store the stuff we buy that we don't use).
The current ownership/consumption picture hasn't always been the picture. Outside of the Romans, the last few thousand years have been generally characterized by shared stuff and space. There were no hotels - we stayed at our friend's place. We didn't have our own separate garages full of stuff - we had a village.
About Stuff:
Do you know that by the time you leave this planet (i.e., die) you will have spent an entire year (of your life) looking for the things you've misplaced? A full year.
We are beginning to realize that lots of stuff isn't better, it's a burden, and that less stuff plus more sharing makes sense (again). The Collaborative Consumption movement is an example. The concept has been championed by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, co-authors of "What's Mine is Y(ours)".
They take a good hard look at what we're consuming, using - or not. One of their favorite examples is the power drill. On average, each household uses its power drill about 10 minutes per year. That leaves our poor lonely little power drills sitting idle 525,590 minutes per year (99.999% of the time). [Correction/Update: A power drill is used for about 10 minutes, on average, during it's lifetime. Thus, a 20-year-old drill will be used for only 10 minutes and will be idle for 10 million minutes] Yes, I did math. The power tool industry is 22 billion dollars. Why do we produce $22 billion worth of power tools each year and let them sit idle approximately 100% of the time? I'm not against the jobs that might exist for the guy or gal making drills, but maybe they'd rather be writers or artists or something other than power-drill-makers working only to race to retirement. And, perhaps if they didn't buy so many power tools and other stuff during their life, maybe they could afford to do the things they really love to do even if writing, painting or whatever doesn't pay as well.
But wait: Share a drill? Share my stuff? Share my car? What?! How? Does that mean I'd have to talk to somebody?
Until recently, sharing was difficult. But now, we can do so more easily with the smart use of technology. Witness ZipCar, RentCycle, and more.
Here's an interesting TechCrunch interview discussing the topic - Why the Collaborative Consumption Revolution Might be as Significant as the Industrial Revolution:
About Space:
Drive down a suburban neighborhood main-drag at 10:00 AM on a Wednesday and most of what you'll see are idle "things" and idle spaces. Those spaces are being heated, cooled and secured for someone to be somewhere else a good chunk of the day.
About Time & Space:
A typical office worker spends 70 to 90% of her awake time working at the office and/or getting ready for and commuting to/from that office. Net-net: We often spend the largest portion of our income on a structure in which we spend very little of our "free" time.
Has this time-space equation made sense? The mortgage crisis helps us answer the question.
There are new ways to look at space and place enabled by the 'Net and the tools we use on the 'Net. Examples include airbnb and CouchSurfing.org
[More about time-spending choices and the definition of "work" in a subsequent article]
3 - Sharing is Good for Us:
Recent studies have shown that our brains ooze more happy-juice and pleasure-stuff when we're in the act of giving & sharing than the pleasure experienced when we obtain, buy or own things.
What's more, as an aging population we're learning that our body parts will increasingly be "fixable" like car parts on a vintage model, but our memory and mental faculties will be our major stumbling block.
Reading and sharing ideas & stories are critical to Social IQ development and maintenance. Such Social IQ and empathy skills are essential to team problem solving in the workplace. For the aging, it's been discovered that social activity and sharing experiences with other humans might be amongst the most important activity to continue as we endeavour to keep our brains healthy.
In conclusion:
Next time we pull out our hard-earned cash to buy something, maybe we should ask ourselves:
- Will I actually use this thing?
- Do I have multiple uses for this thing?
- Could I borrow one instead?
- If I have one, could someone else use it too?
- How much time did I have to work to earn the money to buy this thing? Was it worth it?
Lastly, the next time we're in room #5 of our home, it might be useful to realize that the roughly 200 square-feet of personal space awareness surrounding us is pretty much the same 200 square-feet of awareness surrounding us in room #1.
We can only be in one place at one time.
craig arthur james 2012
The above are not necessarily the views of NEOtropolis or Western Reserve PBS, but rather are the views of this author related to the topics he may have discussed on NEOtropolis as a contributor
