Over the last two years as I’ve worked on yours2share, I’ve tended to assume that the environmental benefits of sharing were so clear that I didn’t need to write them down. I did not like to feel that I was jumping on the environmental bandwagon.
But I suppose I should have known better. People like to have things spelt out for them. Several environmental blogs and websites have already written about yours2share, but when I recently submitted yours2share to a green directory, it was rejected. When I questioned this, I found that the reason was simply that I didn’t have a page spelling out the environmental benefits. They understood perfectly well that sharing was environmentally friendly, but they needed a page that they could point to as justification.
So I’ve written one. Called simply the environmental benefits of sharing, it explains the three basic reasons why.
- better use of resources
- less use of space
- higher standards of maintenance
The first is a statement of the blatantly obvious, the second seems pretty self-evident to me, only the third is what I might consider any form of contribution to knowledge. Many people, who have had shares for years in boats and other items like aircraft, have told me that one advantage of sharing is that they maintain their boat to a very high standard because they can afford to.