CHANGING HAABITTS: Don't Buy It, Borrow It!

Happy Weekend!  On Fridays, we like to post fun tidbits that help encourage our readers to get out and have fun in their free time without buying a slew of new gear (or otherwise driving up demand for new products in a world that is already too burdened by it!).  

 We recently learned about The Sharing Depot in Toronto and wanted to celebrate their mission and their efforts here on our blog.  Founded by a pair of environmental and economic activists eager to build community, The Sharing Depot taps into the city's sharing economy in order to reduce the demand for stuff at the scale of an entire urban community.  Begun in 2012 as a tool lending library, The Sharing Depot now boasts over 2,200 members and has loaned out over 25,000 tools since its inception.  It now also maintains a robust inventory of camping gear, sporting goods, toys, party supplies, and games--all accessible for a week at a time in exchange for a modest annual membership fee.

 We love that The Sharing Depot aims to help its members “own less and experience more” by saving its members money, eliminating the storage space required to house gear that only gets used periodically, and reducing the time needed to manage owning so many superfluous items that cause us to spend more time managing stuff and less time enjoying life.  These goals also serve a greater mission: to spare the planet from the profound impact of duplicitous ownership.  The Sharing Depot makes a measurable dent in reducing the resource load required to mine natural resources and manufacturing new goods, to package and transport them, and ultimately, to store these these goods in landfills when they become obsolete.  

 We’re thrilled to hear about an effort that encourages the sharing of communal resources and asks its members to reconsider longstanding relationships with their own possessions.  We could all use more of this provocation, and we hope the trend catches on in other communities!