sharing economy

How Make Something Week Brought together Thousands of Makers around the Globe

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The goal of this campaign was to reduce wasteful consumption over the holiday season and encourage people to make or repurpose what they need. Workshops like a toy sharing and repairing workshop in Aveiro, Portugal, an upcycling event in Hannover, Germany, and a gift making workshop in Helsinki, Finland, encouraged the over 10,000 participants to create new things from old items, repair broken goods, and learn new skills through do-it-yourself projects. A

Will Sharing Economy Save Civil Society in Latin America and the Caribbean?

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In 2011, TIME magazine mentioned the sharing economy as one of the top 10 ideas that were going to change the world. According to the magazine, the main benefit of the sharing economy is social: “In a time when families are scattered and we do not necessarily know the people in our communities, sharing things – even with strangers that we just met online – allows us to establish meaningful connections”.

What I Really Said on the Canary Islands

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The platform cooperativism movement intervenes at a moment of social crisis in the United States when ninety-four percent of jobs created over the past decade were not in the employment category. In 2016, over twelve million workers have made money on labor platforms. Much of that work is invisible with laborers often exploited, tucked away between algorithms. And over the long-term, as more labor markets shift to the Internet, it also matters that ownership of cloud services and social hangouts on the Internet is highly concentrated.

Kenya’s Sarafu-Credit: Alternative Economies & Community Currencies Pt. 2

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In the second of our three part series on alternative economies and community currencies, we spotlight Kenya’s Sarafu-Credit. Community currencies are types of complimentary currencies shared within a community that are utilized as a means of countering inequality, class, debt, accumulation, and exclusion.

When Buying Nothing Gives You More of Everything

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In addition to the obvious economic savings, the occasional hassle of giving and getting free stuff actually has a more profound advantage: You feel the physical and mental burden of having to gift every item you no longer want in your home, and it’s an embodied lesson in the cost of consumerism that’s quite effective…

Sharing Cities Book Shows Variety of Urban Commoning

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So what might the commons actually achieve for you if you live in a city?  How might you experience the joys of commoning? Check out Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons, a fantastic new book that describes more than 100 case studies and model policies for urban commoning. Researched and published by Shareable, the book is an impressive survey of citizen-led innovations now underway in more than 80 cities in 35 countries. 

New Report Shines Light on Groundbreaking Catalan Cooperative

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The goal of the Catalan Integral Cooperative (“Integral” is a Spanish word best translated as “holistic”) is to build an anti-capitalist cooperative structure not just for the benefit of its own fee-paying members, but for the Commons as a whole.

10 Groups Creating a Real Sharing Economy in the Appalachian Region

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The Appalachian region, home to 25 million people, comprises of West Virginia and parts of twelve of its surrounding states, reaching as far north as New York and south to Mississippi and Alabama. Certain areas of the region are known for high levels of poverty and infant mortality rates and low life expectancies. The region is also home to a number of sharing initiatives, from community gardens to coworking spaces, that aim to connect people to various resources and to each other.

How Indigenous Land-Use Practices Inform the Current Sharing Economy

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Affordable housing-related CLTs are probably best-known, but this model can be applied for any community goal, including lowering costs for small businesses and ensuring local food production. Though the CLT model has been re-emerging since the late 1960s, it is actually somewhat of a return to indigenous practices around ownership of land and resources.

8 Reasons Why Denver is Set to Become a Major Sharing City

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All over the globe — from Ghent, Belgium to Gothenburg, Sweden — people have been launching amazing sharing projects. These include bike kitchens, coworking spaces, community gardens, and so much more. On this side of the pond, we recently profiled the range of sharing initiatives in Ithaca, New York. Now, another city in the U.S. that’s transforming into a great Sharing City is Denver.

How Innovative Funding Models Could Usher in a New Era of Worker-Owned Platform Cooperatives

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To counter poor labor practices, gig workers and entrepreneurs are now taking matters into their own hands by launching their own digital platforms for various services. Called “platform cooperatives,” these businesses bring the structure of traditional cooperatives, including worker ownership and governance, to the digital world.