Roo Rogers on the Rise of Collaborative Consumption

“The great success of hyper-consumption in the 20th century was persuading consumers that sharing is somehow akin to being either a hippie or a communist,” says Roo Rogers. “The 21st century is about realizing that sharing is actually good for business, good for the consumer, and good for the planet.” The age old art of sharing and swapping—be it a bicycle, car, spare room, or power drill—is back, and Roo Rogers and Rachel Botsman have written the handbook: What’s Mine is Yours: the Rise of Collaborative Consumption. In our interview, Rogers explains how it all works, and how he practices what he preaches.

TreeHugger: What is collaborative consumption?

Roo Rogers: Collaborative consumption is a new movement that is really taking over our society. It’s based on a set of behaviors of bartering and trading and sharing. It’s tapping into consumers’ desire to find a better model, a better way to have the benefits of the goods that they want in their lives.

It taps into consumers’ awareness that products are often found at too high a price. They are often inconvenient, because you have to travel long distances to find them, or you have to store them. And then when you’ve bought them and don’t need them anymore, there’s nothing you can do with them.

So it’s a really much more efficient model of using a product that you need without having to buy it.

Think of it this way. I live in New York City and the last thing in the entire universe I want is a car. I don’t want to have to pay for the maintenance of the car. I don’t want to have to pay for the storage to the car. I especially don’t want to have to pay for the car, because really I only use the car about once a month to go visit my friends on the weekends. So why am I going to have a car for all the other days that I don’t use it?

So ZipCar is a fantastic solution because it basically allows me to share a car. It allows me to use that car only when I need it. And thanks to technology, that car is in constant use. It’s a very good business model for the entrepreneur in the business. It’s a great convenience for me as a user because it’s available when I need it.  Read Interview

By Jacob Gordon