Six months ago, certain words and phrases were completely alien to me. One of them is provenance (especially regarding the origins of food), and the second is "collaborative consumption".
So what is it? The website collaborativeconsumption.com states that it is "...a social and economic system driven by network technologies that enable the sharing and exchange of all kinds of assets from spaces to skills to cars in ways and on a scale never possible before."
Here's a nice little video that provides a nice little summary:
A quote from the video describes it as "traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting and swapping redefined through technology and peer communities".
Several of the websites and projects I've come across and used so far this year come under the collaborative consumption banner - couchsurfing, freecycle, justfortheloveofit, liftshare, gocarshare, indiegogo, kickstarter. All my experiences have been great - I've met amazing people, saved money, borrowed things instead of having to buy things, supported projects I believe in, and felt part of a different economy. Added to that, I've contributed my own piece in a small way through the Bristol Jam Jar Network, trying to set up exchanges of jam jars between people rather than recycle or waste them.
All in all, I think learning about collaborative consumption has been one of the most interesting parts of the project so far. I've been doing a lot of research over the last few weeks about different projects for something I'm hoping to do next year, and have come across a whole array of inspiring and interesting ideas. More to come soon......
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