Rentalism
by Tamara Giltsoff, United Kingdom on 08.27.07
"Rentalism" is the new consumption. I just made that word up because I think rental is on the tip of a rebirth. Now's surely the time not to be burdend by the ownership of stuff that costs money, takes up space and wastes planetary resources, but to enter the new marketplace of shared use and rentinn. A while ago I wrote an article about renting things, sharing things and falling in love. I profiled a German site called Erento, which is basically an enabler for renting. It pairs borrowers with renters. Well, here’s a sneak preview of a similar site that is launching in the U.S. this coming fall (early September). It is called irent2u.com and it aims to create a single “Online Rental Marketplace” where anyone can rent anything from anyone. It will “change the face of commerce as you know it” and “get more from what you already have”. I like the sound of it. As it says, “Mankind is faced with virtually limitless wants yet only limited resources. We satisfy these desires by purchasing all we can afford yet in the process create tremendous waste and lose untold value. Everyday trillions of dollars in useful assets sit unused all across the world. People own large quantities of items they hardly ever use while others are forced to go without”. The site lists a few: drills, barbeques, or extra vehicles, which sometimes only get used once or twice a year.
Baby/children’s goods spring to mind in particular. Cots, buggies, bibs, books, changing mats etc. are all quite short-lived consumable items. Kids grow older and a lot of these goods become redundant. Money spent, resources used, and then what happens? I think some items get passed along, but wouldn’t it make sense to ‘servicesize’ a lot of these goods ie, to pay for use not ownership of some of these things and then when you are done with them they get taken back, refurbished and utilized again or shared between a chain of people (perhaps you pick a community of others to share your resource with).
“Rental” has typically been synonymous with the less affluent that can’t afford to buy something outright, so instead pays an ongoing fee for the receipt of using it. But in a world of finite natural resources, waste and the legacy of post consumer goods becoming everyone’s issue, renting and not having the burden of owning and then dealing with the disposal or storage of goods is a compelling proposition.
The Internet is a great enabler for connecting people, their needs, to resources already in the market, and turning this into value. Freecycle is a great example of a site that connects people, via email, with things they want to throw away with others who can use them. The rule on this site is that everything is free.
Irent2u.com categorizes items to rent under: events and parties, sports and hobbies, computer and office, arts and film, photo, audio and video, vacation homes, cars vehicles and aircraft, agencies artists and services, construction and building, real estate and roommates. You can search by category or by geographic area. The site builds up a profile and rates lenders and borrowers in much the way E-bay does. I am excited about sharing/renting cars from lenders nearby me in New York if I want to get out the city or even a vacation home. In fact my list goes on: a drill (nope, I haven’t bought one since moving here), someone to help me put up my shelves (yes, I am useless), a medium format camera lens, a vintage outfit for a wedding would be nice, a pair of cross-country skis, a horse…
Written by Tamara Giltsoff
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- A New Online Tool, WattzOn Uses A Different Approach to Curbing Energy Consumption
- Become an Un-Consumer, Join The Compact, Save Money, Reduce Your Eco-Footprint
- Book Review: Ten Technologies to Save the Planet
- Assembling a (Sustainable) Reusable Lunch Box Kit for $40...is it Possible?
Feel the Wind in Your Hair with a Vespa Lamp
|
The TH Interview: Dan Porras of Better Energy Systems/Solio
|
What a great Idea! One concern that I have is what happens if the item that you lend out is damaged when it is returned? Is there any protection for the lender?
This is great idea and one who's time has definitely come - I've been borrowing and loaning with friends for years, pasta machines, power tools, clothing, you name it. To have a web site and true local connection to do this would be really nice.
Probably the biggest issue with any system like this is going to be managing trust. I might loan something expensive to a friend but not to a neighbor. A grill to a neighbor but not to a stranger. And so on.
For you to loan or rent something you're going to want some assurance that you'll get the item back, and that you'll get it back in basically the same condition in which it was leant.
It's not as easy as saying, "Hey, I've got a 'vette I don't drive that often, who'd like to rent it for a weekend?"
Great idea. Let's face it...our homes are filled with junk we use but once or twice a year. And those famous lines about millions of drills being sold a year...people want holes, not drills! So pass that drill along!
If this caught on in a big way, I wonder how many manufacturing jobs would vanish. Not that they were sustainable, truly, but the economy would have to become more sane... (that's a good thing, in the long run).
Hey Tamara,
Love the article. I am glad to hear that you agree with what we are trying to do. I must say we are pretty excited about getting a chance to launch and start helping people get more out of life.
An update on our timeline. Looks like we are going to do a private "alpha" launch in September, to do some final testing. Then a bit of modifications based on feedback with our public launch closer to November.
For anyone who wants to be notified when we launch in your area, go to our blog www.iRent2u.com/blog and sign up for the newsletter.
We feel pretty excited to have made it onto TreeHugger. This is just about the best earth-friendly news medium around these days.
Thanks!
Tim McCormack
iRent2u.com - the Online Rental Marketplace
We are a long way from this right now - products have become so cheap that most people will now buy those 'miscellaneous', once-a-year products, instead of renting or even not having access to them at all.
And even with more expensive stuff, it seems less popular. I would love to rent a nice LCD tv, but there's no-one here in the UK left to rent from!
I hope sites like these can help change it around, the recent post on TH about tool libraries highlighted how useful it can be.
I think you've hit the nail on the head about the growing need (from a ecological point of view) and the growing acceptance and embracing (from a consumer point of view) of the wisdom of rental.
My company, Gagas.com, offers children's special occasion clothes for rental (we've been called "Netflix for kid's clothes) and in our first year we've been overwhelmed by the demand for this type of service.
Every parent knows that the biggest problems with kids clothes are that they cost so much and kids outgrow them so fast, and those problems are compounded when you're trying to dress your child for a special occasion where you know they'll only wear something once. We're thrilled to be able to finally offer parents an affordable option to buying new outfits each time there's a wedding, First Communion, portrait, recital, etc.
Thanks for helping spread the word about the wisdom of renting!
Cheers,
Mike W. Miller
CEO, Gaga's
http://Gagas.com
I see some people have brought up some important issues around trust. This was definitely a key consideration for us when creating the system.
We are integrating such tools as deposits (to ensure you get your stuff back), rating systems (so we can catch and highlight people who try to abuse the system), and optional insurance offerings (for protection against unlikely problems).
I also want to say that we love the Gagas site (another commenter above is the CEO). They have a great model too, which can save you a lot of money.
This is all coming together into a global movement towards life-cycling, constantly recycling the items we use. It is so much more efficient, and as long as we can get around the convenience and logistical issues, it is sure to make an incredible impact on the world.
This is a very exciting time!
Tim McCormack
iRent2u.com - the Online Rental Marketplace
In relation to trust, it's perhaps important to recognise that people are getting pretty adept at negotiating how to trust strangers in the Web2.0 world of social software. Whether its eBay ratings or Facebook invitations, new social skills are emerging. This was recognised by Dave Chiu's 'reputation aggregator' rent-a-thing project [www.d4v3.net/resume/ad2_2.php] (which Tamara mentioned in an earlier post), and has been thoroughly analysed by Jochai Benkler in his paper 'Sharing Nicely' [benkler.org/SharingNicely.html]. So the strategic question is, how can we transfer these skils from the sharing of immaterial things (music files and playlists) to the sharing of material possessions?
By the way, for those downunder, a local initiative is hirethings.co.nz, part of an ambitious role-out of letuseit.com.
Great post!
If the economics don't work, recycling efforts won't either.
As our little contribution to make this economics of recycling more appealing, http://LivePaths.com blogs about people and companies that make money selling recycled or reused items, provide green services or help us reduce our dependency on non renewable resources.
I'm delighted to have stumbled upon this post, I was beginning to think I was the only person who thinks we should be sharing more and that sharing can be achieved through rental as well as fractional ownership (or joint ownership, shared ownership, co-ownership, call it what you will)
Because I felt so passionately about this, I created yours2share matching people to share through fractional ownership or fractional rental.
Fractional rental means renting the property for fractions of time over a longer period: the most well-known form of this being Monday to Friday rentals. This is a variant of flat-sharing where the tenant only takes the room from Monday to Friday, usually because they working away from their main residence.
I got involved in fractional rental because I wanted to rent a weekend cottage out on alternate weekends, or maybe every third or fourth weekend – and I couldn’t find anyway of finding suitable partners. But I found other people doing this with people they had met by chance and thought there should be a service enabling people to find each other.
However I think there is also considerable scope for rentals of holiday homes overseas on an even more flexible basis. For example, if I had a villa in Spain which was really my second home and not simply an investment, I would prefer to find someone to rent it for (say) three months a year, paying me a monthly rental and agreeing the dates we would both use it in advance. Alternatively the key dates could be agreed in advance and the remaining dates booked on a first come basis between us.
Whilst this would undoubtedly generate a lower rental per week, I would be able to “vet” the person and their family, have a known income, there would probably be less wear and tear because the tenant is constantly returning to the villa, creating a greater chance that they will look after it, it’s left vacant less, and I don’t have the hassle and cost of marketing the villa for rent. In return the tenant effectively gets a second home for a lot less than is would cost to normally holiday rent for three months, and without any commitment.
For valuable assets, I can't believe that we aren't already doing this more. So many second homes, boats, cars, aircraft, mobile homes, jewels, paintings, all kind of equipment lie around idle for the vast majority of the time. If we shared a bit more, we could not only use less resources, but have access to much better quality assets that we would otherwise.
Yes, it requires some thought at the beginning to set this up properly, but I've given it a lot of thought, and it is quite achievable, and the benefits are huge.
There is a lot of advice on the yours2share website.
Great article, I'm sorry I didn't see it earlier. I run a not-for-profit site that does something similar. I started www.RentNotBuy.com because it just seems like such a waste to be forced into buying everything, such as drills etc.. I wanted to try bring local communities together to share some of their resources, reducing environmental impact (both in turns of carbon and waste produced buy al these discarded stuff that you used exactly once) .
I'm very glad that there are commercial sites out there, like Irent2u, as it means that I'm no a crazy man (or at least I'm no alone in my madness) for thinking that we can curb our over consumption without making do without some of the stuff that we all enjoy.
RentNotBuy.com is non-profit and doesn't charge or any of it's services.
Great...I love this post, I got more info here, Thanks.Really happy to read this, I too interested in new Fashions, I got lot of ideas of pashmina shawls and fashion through internet.It has an excellent selection.