It all started with a drill. Americans use their electric drills for only 13 minutes each year, according to one widely cited estimate. Yet around half of households own one. As Uber and other “sharing economy” start-ups gathered steam in the 2010s, the drill was the perfect symbol for why the United States was on the verge of a revolution in which strangers or neighbors would rent out their belongings to one another. The parable of the idle drill, repeated from the New York Times to the TED stage, helped launch a thousand start-ups on the seas of the sharing economy. Ecomodo, Crowd Rent, Share Some Sugar, NeighborGoods, Thingloop, OhSoWe, Yerdle and SnapGoods all promised to make money off your stuff.
All of them have now effectively disappeared. People loved the idea of renting from their neighbors. The reality? Not so much. The problem that birthed those failed platforms persists: Most of our household items are rarely, if ever, used. Some 80 percent are picked up less than once a month, estimates the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Many of us would be thrilled to see our belongings put to good use by someone we trust, even without payment. Can something useful be built upon the wreckage of the sharing economy? For a month, I tried to rent everything I needed on the latest generation of peer-to-peer lending platforms, seeking out a speaker, LEGO for my kids and party supplies. I also put my own stuff on there for others to borrow. My experiment didn’t work, leaving me empty-handed. But I’d read about the failures of enough platforms to detect a pattern: The problem wasn’t primarily the drill (or any other item). It was turning local trust into a marketplace. So I tried the reverse: I teamed up with a friend in my neighborhood to launch a free app for neighbors to share their stuff. Do you share with your neighbors? Tell me your stories at climatecoach@washpost.com. I read all your emails.
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