driving lights

A lack of privacy online may be the best thing we've ever done for our environment! facebook has taken a lot of heat lately over privacy. You may not have noticed, through the recent media uproar, but in the eyes of many environmental entrepreneurs or "ecopreneurs" knowing your online secrets could be considered the best thing for the planet.

It may not seem like an environmentalist's tool of choice but many websites such as Jayride, Freecycle, Airbnb, Swap.com, FriendsWithThings, GarageSaleTrail among others, are exploiting new social networking technology and our mobile online lifestyle to help people to reduce their environmental impact, their consumption and their costs in a very traditional way:

By good old-fashioned sharing!

On Jayride, the Australian ride share or carpool matching site, facebook connects people who are going (driving) the same way. Why? Well, the costs of any car trip are mostly fixed. So, by filling those spare seats (in other words: sharing with more people), the cost per person is reduced.

Saving the planet from climate change

The potential in sharing is huge. Consider this: a carpool could save you five dollars each way every day on your commute to and from work. So, by carpooling you'll save yourself $2,400 every year. That's $5 x2 (to work, and back) x5 (days per week) x48 (weeks of work per year). And that just means more money in YOUR pocket! It's a surprising equation that applies not only to your dollar cost, but also to the cost of your carbon emissions.

“I fully believe that the car ownership model is broken. There's so much waste, so much congestion and pollution; so much unnecessary cost. I don't want to have to own a vehicle or look after it, or pay for insurance, or drive it myself. I want transport as a service I can buy. Public transport is great, however it will never reach the level of flexibility a carpool network could (in theory) reach. And so, we're trying to reach out and make that happen.”
…Rod Bishop – on his motivation to start Jayride

This is just one example of sharing in action. In Rachel Botsman's book, What's Mine is Yours, on the topic of "collaborative consumption" she highlights the power drill; an item that many households own, yet seldom use.

Collaborative Consumption

Purchasing a power drill creates waste due to the production and ultimate disposal of the drill, and that waste is reflected in it's cost. So wouldn't it make sense to simply rent one when you need it, or share someone else's, and not have to pay the full cost?

After all, rentals and sharing are used in so many other facets of our lives every day. Consider share flats, house or car and truck rentals. These items have always been shareable because of their high cost. The cost to own is so high that it justifies the transaction costs of renting one instead.

Let's face it, you'll spend hours hunting, queuing, filling out forms, providing references and identification, all to rent a house because the alternative &ndash buying one – is just too expensive.

This has never been true of the drill, which explains why you've probably never rented one. The cost in time and effort to rent a drill has always been much higher than the cost of buying your own. Until now!

Social Networking to the Rescue

Enter facebook, where freedom of information, and the strength of networking, is removing the transaction costs of renting and sharing by placing everyone on the same page. When plugged into websites like Jayride and others, facebook creates online sharing and renting directories. It delivers the scale these directories need to ensure that there is always a home, a drill, or a carpool near you, when and where you need it.

Plus with facebook's lack of privacy comes an increasing trust in strangers. Think about those proof-of-identity forms that you no longer need to complete. facebook knows who you are, and who your friends are, so that with one click a potential sharer can learn plenty about you, giving them the information they need to know to trust you.

The evidence from Jayride shows that despite the recent uproar over privacy issues, people value the trust it can deliver, almost as a by-product, higher than their privacy.

Expect to see this trend towards sharing take off as facebook drives more connections and more availability of information. So much so, that environmentalists are predicting that old-fashioned sharing, enabled by the new social networking and mobile technologies, will soon start to reduce the cost and &ndash most importantly $ndash; the environmental impact of everything we do.

Soon driving to work and paying an extra $2,400 each year may be seen as an unnecessary luxury that's no longer worth the cost.


Links to the websites mentioned:


Written by Rod Bishop
[disclosure: Rod Bishop is the Co-founder of Jayride]

Image Credit: Martin Cathrae via Flickr Creative Commons
Edited by Suze Chalmers