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This page is sometimes cross-linked with the freelenders blog, which is also recommended for keeping in touch with the themes most relevant to freelending.
Links
Dictionary definition of freecycle in Urban Dictionary
Articles
LetsAllShare.com (would-be collaborators?) -Survey results
Summary of Survey on sharing
Not interested in the Freecycle/Freegle 'bickering'
-from 'Money Saving Expert' correspondence
Freegle has nearly a million users; all voluntary?
-story here
What went wrong with Freecycle UK?
-story from the Ecologist (30th September 2009)
NB This article informs us that the UK is the country with the highest proportion of freecyclers in the world.
Persuading us to be good?
(Radio 4 -15th & 20th September 2009)
Link here
On the programme, Steve Martin (from the consultancy 'Influence at Work') said:
"There are six key universal principles of persuasion. They are:
- Reciprocation -the idea that people are more likely to want to give back to someone who has given something to them first.
- Liking -the idea that people are more persuaded by people that they like.
- Scarcity -we are more influenced by something that is less available or that we stand to lose in a given situation.
- Authority -the idea that when we are often overloaded or uncertain of the correct decision ourselves, we'll look to credible experts to guide our behaviour.
- Consistency -The idea that when we make a small stand we'll encounter interpersonal pressure to be consistent with that in the future; particularly if our views are publicised.
- Consensus -the idea that we follow the lead of others around us in a given situation; it's a phenomena that's also referred to as 'social proof'"
....In a study of what information would change behaviour, we found that "it was only the information about what the neighbours were doing that produced a change in behaviour."
Dr Lucy Reynolds (working for Dept of Health funded research centre) describes peer pressure and cognitive-dissonance theory:
"the sense of unease you get if your attitudes and behaviours are out of line. One way of re-enforcing that is by making a pledge. If I say that I am going to do something, then I become uncomfortable when I don't do it. So pledges are important, and making a commitment to a group makes it much more likely to achieve your commitment because of that group and social pressure. Private internalised pledges are, of course, important and goal setting is very important, but if you can get that in some public setting...it is witnessed and verified by other people and the pressure to achieve is increased in that way."
Volunteer Vision (from Radio 4's 'Something Understood' website)
Mike Wooldridge celebrates the role of the volunteer in the company of Glyn Roberts, whose own voluntary organisation has sent over two million reconditioned tools to help poor craftsmen and women in Africa and Asia to help themselves.
Buying and Selling (from Radio 4's 'Something Understood' website)
Something Understood: Buying and Selling
This programme was written and presented by Mark Tully and the readers were Simon Tcherniak, Imogen Stubbs and John Sessions.
Music
"The Constant Gardener", original soundtrack, composed by Alberton Iglesiaas, Higher Octave 3368872, track 13 "Kothbiro", performed by Ayub Ogada.
Henry Purcell, "If Ever I More Riches Did Desire", off CD "Hark How All The Wild Musicians Sing", Hyperion CDA 66750, track 12, Parley of Instruments. cond. Peter Holman.
"The Markets of Provence", from the single ‘Salut les Copains’ by Gilbert Becaud. EMI France, 7 EGF 284.
Wild Swans, Elena Kats-Chernin, Wild Swans Concert Suite, ABC 4767639, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Cond. Ola Rudner, Tr 2.
Memphis Minnie, "Selling my Pork Chops", Document records BD CD 6008.
The Peanut Vendor from ‘Omara Portudondo and Martin Rojas’ 1975, Love Records, LRLP 130 (Finland).
Readings
Story of Rabbi, from "The Jewish Ideal of Business".
Rumi poem, "We are three", published by Maypop Books.
"The Roof of All Evil", D.H.Lawrence, from "Chapters into Verse", Poetry in English inspired by the Bible – ed. Robert Atwan and Laurence Wieder, Oxford University Press 1993.
Martin Amis, "Success", Cape 1976.
Montaigne, "One man’s profit is another man’s loss", from "The Complete Essays". published by Penguin.
End of consumerism?
Over at the marketing consultancy Added Value, talk is of a “consumer tipping point” that will profoundly alter our attitudes to consumption. “It’s already happening on the fringes and in niches. People are sated with consumption,” says cultural insight director Cate Hunt.
She points to phenomena as diverse as the way organic produce has gone mainstream, the rise of vintage and recycled clothing, the growth of urban vegetable growing and the demonisation of 4X4 cars as early evidence of a trend that is still largely restricted to the western middle classes, but will become far more widespread. “People are embracing this change,” she says.
At Henley Headlightvision, another WPP consultancy, director Michelle Harrison agrees that “people are aspiring to a post material society.”
Meanwhile trend spotter Marian Salzman, marketing director of US PR agency Porter Novelli has also noticed a less materialistic bent in society. “The push away from mega consumption is the mega trend of the moment. There are no bragging rights in acquisition anymore. There’s a horrible glut of things and we are moving towards a zero acquisition society.”
Citizen Renaissance
All these strands are pulled together in an open source ‘wiki’, ‘Citizen Renaissance,’ published online this month by Jules Peck director of the UK Conservative Party Quality Of life Policy Group and Robert Phillips, CEO of the London office of PR agency Edelman UK.
It deals with precisely these issues of social change, attitudes to consumerism and the role of business, especially the marketing services industry, in what they say must be a new world order.
If it were only an altruistic concern for the environment at work, the move away from what they call “relative consumerism” or “keeping up with the Joneses” might not be quite so profound they argue. But it is the result of what Peck and Phillips call “a perfect storm” that makes a period of rapid and radical social change inevitable.
Three seismic shocks are combining to completely reshape our world, they say. “ Firstly, climate change has profoundly affected all our lives. We have awoken to the fact that we are over-consuming the resources of our planet and threatening ourselves in the process.” Problems like ‘peak oil’ -the expiry of global oil reserves, plug into this.
Age of Wellbeing
“Secondly we are entering a Wellbeing Age, matched by a more selfless and non relative-materialist and non growth-obsessed ecological economics. Individualism is out, individuation and community is in. Finally, the digital revolution means we are undergoing a metamorphosis towards a new age of Democracy and resurgent citizenship which could threaten the nature of corporate consumer-capitalism itself.”
All this needs to be distinguished from the current cyclical problems of the world economy, they argue. Says Peck “The financial crisis and commodity price inflation are sharpening the current feeling that doomsday is imminent although they are not in themselves the cause of change.”
But combine all these factors and they say: “a reordering of the current model of mass marketing and consumption is inevitable”. Tune-in to this or risk all they warn.
Marketing consultant John Grant, former planning director of UK advertising collective St Lukes and author of ‘The Green Marketing Manifesto’ suggests that two more forces will come into play making consumer change a certainty: Government and price. “In the near future there will be all sorts of legislation that will directly affect consumption. For instance a rule that all cars have to meet very stringent fuel efficiency standards will mean that sports cars disappear, almost over night. Similarly, if the price of raw materials such as cotton reflects their environmental impact, the idea that you can wear a shirt once and throw it away becomes untenable.”
Consumption vs energy consumption
The real issue however is not consumption, but energy consumption he says.
Although counter-intuitive, it may just be that brands, being purely intellectual constructs with low carbon footprints, fit in perfectly with this ethos of energy austerity. The ability to conjure value out of nothing at all could be ideal for this green new world.
Perhaps. But not only will consumers shift their spending to more low–energy goods, (local foods, training, education and courses are just some examples), new forms of consumption will probably arise. “We are looking at a complete redesign of modern life,” says Grant. So the trend to ‘fractional ownership, where products are pooled and shared will explode. Another consumer strategy will be ‘treasuring’ where people buy high quality artefacts and look after them and repair them when they wear out rather than throwing them away.”
His best guess is that some time in the next five to ten years we will move into a long period of austerity in which the factors already mentioned conspire to make conspicuous consumption not only unfashionable but almost impossible. “Culture is moving into a time of restraint and simplicity.” [article extract from off the grid]
Extracts from Douglas Rushkoff Interview
"When push comes to shove and our corporations fail us we begin to look to our peers for support," he says. "We're going to have to start doing favours for each other, working with each other ... and then we'll start to see that it's more fun, more meaningful and cheaper."
Life Inc [Douglas Rushkoff's book] supposes that the only way to eschew the corporate world is through communal action. People need to reconnect with each other to create real value again. "The part I'm optimistic about is people who genuinely want to get back to doing something. It's OK to just make a living. Why is that wrong?"
Full interview at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/16/douglas-rushkoff-life-inc
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