Sharing Could Be the Easiest Climate Solution We’re Not Thinking About

Students are blogging about topics that interest them for Applications in Climate and Society, a core spring class.

Florence Guan, C+S ’19

Jacquie lives a zero-waste life. The yellow shirt and blue jeans she always wears are from the local vintage store. She got her favorite makeup mirror from Craigslist. Because of the little free library set up in her neighborhood, she has been able to read her third book for free this month. On weekends, she goes to her friends’ potluck parties by riding Citi Bike. Jacquie has spent more than 30 years in the green marketing industry, but she now prefers to be called Ms. NYC Zero Waste Advocate.

Jacquie is not alone. More and more people are pursuing a resource-efficient lifestyle that minimizes waste. What we choose to wear, where we travel and even what we eat are closely related with the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. The environmental impact of consumerism is both direct (driving cars) and indirect (supply chain waste and pollution). A study published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology shows that the stuff we consume is responsible for more than 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and between 50 and 80 percent of total land, material and water use.

(source: Florence Guan)

Sharing is one way to do reduce some of those emissions. It is rarely discussed as a climate change solution, but as the sharing economy becomes popular, it could be an explicit way to tackle the problem. There are peer-to-peer platforms for just about every service you can imagine. If we can make these platforms appealing to use—whether because they save people money or are more convenient—they could also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions per capita. For example, each mile someone travels via bike share instead of driving a car means about 1 pound of carbon dioxide is kept out of the atmosphere. Citi Bike, New York’s bike share program, will add 4,000 pedal-assist e-bikes to its fleet later this year, meaning people can go farther and save more car miles traveled.

However, sharing is more than just bikes and house rentals. Encouraged people to think in new ways like sharing rather than owning and reusing and recycling rather than single-use consumption can have further benefits. It can be as easy as buying a second-handed textbook, bringing old clothes to retailers with recycling programs and carrying a cloth bag to shop instead of getting a plastic bag.

Jacquie is currently advising for the New York Department of Sanitation on how to establish a zero-waste building maintenance training program. That could have real transformational change. The thing about sharing is if everyone can do it, it could be the easiest climate change solution that we all can contribute to.