One Planet Sutton

Here's a short video about Collaborative Consumption that describes some new (and traditional) ideas for sharing resources. We have traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping redefined through technology and peer communities. These ideas help us move towards One Planet lifestyles, and some are much more attractive and easy than others.

We've listed a number of links below that are mentioned in the video, and also chosen some from our waste and materials advice pages.

Useful resources:

London Community Resource Network: a group that works to solve London's resource challenges sustainably, through community-based waste prevention, reuse and recycling

Zopa: a peer-to-peer bank

Freecycle in Sutton

Furniture re-use network

Car plus: Find your local car club

Sutton Bookshare is a simple free service that lets local residents list their books on a website and then share them with each other. It's very easy to use and open to everyone who lives or works in the London Borough of Sutton.

Do go and check it out if you like books, or want to get reading more: www.suttonbookshare.org.uk

Bookshare is part of a wider project called Sutton Open Library that’s about opening up the library service to innovation. The aim is to inspire people to read more. The Bookshare website also encourages use of Sutton's libraries and provides links to where you can buy the books directly.

The service was designed by local resident, Adrian Short, and funded through a grant from NESTA (a charity distributing lottery money) under their Make It Local funding scheme. Adrian Short has written an interesting blog with his thoughts about the project and is well worth a read if you would like to find out more. The scheme isn't popular with everyone though, as Amanda Craig writes in her blog. What do you think about Sutton Book Share, and will you use it?