Tag Archives: sharing economy

A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Sharing Economy

PaulMinettMarkSvenvoldNobody hitchhikes anymore. Back in the 1980s getting a ride with a stranger became decidedly un-trendy. Rugged individualism was in and ridesharing was out. But now, with the advent of social media and mobile platforms, ridesharing is making a come-back. This week’s guests on Sea Change Radio are Paul Minett, the founder of the Ridesharing Institute in Auckland, NZ and Mark Svenvold, a journalist and Professor at Seton Hall University who recently profiled Minett’s work on ridesharing for Orion Magazine.

Dubbed by some as the Johnny Appleseed of the new ridesharing, Minett points out that if everybody carpooled one day a week we could see as much as a 20 percent reduction in traffic volumes. The corresponding reduction in traffic jams and carbon emissions would also be pretty great. Catch a ride with us now, across the planet, to hear what it will take to put ridesharing back in vogue.

Adam Werbach and Julene Bair: Waste Not

adamwerbachJuleneBairHow much junk do you own? You’re probably not technically a “hoarder” but like most Americans, you may have way more stuff than you know what to do with – stuff that is no longer valuable to you, but that you don’t want to just throw away. This week on Sea Change Radio, we talk to Adam Werbach, the co-founder of Yerdle, an online sharing platform that allows people to trade things they no longer need or want in exchange for other people’s stuff that they do want, using a points-based economy. No currency changes hands, and no new materials are used to make more stuff.

Then, host Alex Wise speaks to the author of The Ogallala Road, Julene Bair. Her touching new memoir is a personal account of how the ascendance of industrial farming in America has laid waste to the social fabric of the heartland.