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If you’re always looking for the next green product or earth-friendly how-to, you might be overlooking some less obvious eco-friendly tools: Sharing and community. Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, authors of just-released What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, say that in light of the global financial crisis, it’s time to use online social networks to deepen our sense of community, stewardship, and shared experience – and move away from hyper-consumption in society.
Facebook-haters, listen up: They say that using online communities can make us feel more connected, share experiences, and even share our stuff so that we feel less need to consume and produce waste. They hope to inspire local communities to engage in “collaborative consumption” and make smarter design choices for the collective good rather than individual, short-term gratification.
What do you think? Do online social networks help you feel a better sense of community? Do you think it makes you a greener citizen?
I agree with Rachel and Roo. Social networks are able to strengthen real life networks. Here in Melbourne, Australia, there’s a Facebook page for giving stuff away for free, plus a whole site dedicated to building local sharing networks (thesharehood.org) plus all the Meetups happening is all about getting people face to face to work through common issues and connect in a community. Social networks are just high speed (and better featured) versions of letters and phone calls.