Book Review ? Percolate Magazine

?What?s Mine Is Yours: The Rise Of Collaborative Consumption? by Rachel Botsman & Roo Rogers (?12.99 HarperCollins)

Have you ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Just east of Japan and west of Hawaii swirls a stew of 3.5 million tonnes of garbage, 90 per cent of which is plastic: bottle caps, toys, shoes, shopping bags, wrapping? A none-too-pretty monument to our throwaway society of hyper-consumerism.

This is just one of the scene-setters described in Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers? book (released in paperback earlier this year) ?What?s Mine is Yours: The Rise Of Collaborative Consumption?. But before you think this is another doom laden, environmental chest-beating tome, think again. This is ultimately a positive and inspiring look at how technology ? democratised web development, Twitter, Facebook and its ilk ? is reviving bygone methods of consumption such as bartering, reusing, sharing and swapping in this post-crash era. They christen this new movement ?Collaborative Consumption?. This book is full of tales of how new, predominantly online businesses created to help and encourage us to consume collaboratively are emerging and thriving thanks to our social media-obsessed society.

Books on business may not be everyone?s choice of bedtime reading but Botsman and Rogers imbue these tech start-up stories with a human element throughout. There is a slight US-bias in the book meaning one can?t help but conjure up images of Silicon Valley-based web geeks programming their way to multi-million dollar fortunes ? but this would be misleading. The book takes us through the real-time problems that inspired the ?Eureka? moments experienced by entrepreneurs from many different backgrounds. A bit of Googling will often uncover UK versions of the most exciting sounding websites.

?What?s Mine?? provokes dozens of ?why hasn?t that been done before?? moments: UsedCardboardBoxes ? give or take from this cardboard box pool for when you need boxes for one-off occasions like moving house; Brainwash Laundrette ? be part of a ?cafe culture? community of wifi and live music when waiting for your laundry to finish; Toy Loan ? access thousands of toys for short-term loan before the kids get bored again. What is inspiring is how so many of the schemes have sparked a wave of imitators. The market for toy swaps and hire now includes BabyPlays, Dim Dom and Rent-a-Toy; car sharers can try RelayRides, Spride and Getaround; you can swap books at BookHopper, Paperbackswap and Booksmooch. The book?s accompanying website (www.collaborativeconsumption.com) has some great info-graphics of these market evolutions.

So, now we can dress ourselves via The Clothing Exchange (or EcoModo, Swapstyle, 99 Dresses), co-work at Central (or The Hub, The Cube, Citizen Space), holiday through Airbnb (or CouchSurfing, Roomorama, Crashpadder), grow food through LandShare (or SharedEarth, UrbanGardenShare), and everything else in between? The future looks positive because the future is shared.

Guest Reviewer: Kerry Law of Kerry Law PR & Communications (you can also find Kerry on Twitter).

Source: http://percolatemagazine.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/book-review-5/

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