Posted by Ryan
Wed, 26 Sep 2007 04:06:00 GMT
On NPR today, I heard about this great website called
Consumer Consequences. Basically, you answer a bunch of questions about your lifestyle, and it tells you how many earths worth of resources it would take if everyone in the world lived like you do. What a wake-up call!
I will, embarassingly, share my score. 10.4. That's right. If everyone lived like I do, it would take 10.4 earths to sustain us. My worst scoring category was transportation, which I imagine would apply to lots of folks who do a lot of driving by themselves (that's a lot of energy just to transport the weight of one person!)
Try it out (it only takes a couple of minutes) and share your score with us!
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Posted by Ryan
Sun, 16 Sep 2007 23:11:00 GMT
Have you ever known someone with a car or boat that just sat on their lot for years without being used? When they finally put in a fresh tank of gas and tried to start it up, what happened? It didn't start! Why? Because engines are meant to be used, not to sit there abandoned. When you use an engine regularly, the various seals and other parts stay properly lubricated and moist so that they do not dry out. It also keeps fresh gas and oil running through the system instead of letting stale fluids sit there. Simply put, an unused engine deteriorates over time.
This is one of the many great benefits of
loaning your stuff out to neighbors. The extra use is actually good for it! I have found this to be the case with all of my engine-equipped Loanables, including my
fishing boat and my
lawnmower. The fishing boat is something I just don't use as often as I thought I would, and an outboard motor is expensive (the 25HP motor is worth more than the boat and trailer combined!) By sharing my boat, it gets much more use and stays in better condition than if I just let it sit there, deteriorating.
Same for my lawnmower, which I don't use these days since I pay the neighborhood kids to cut my lawn. A guy in my neighborhood rented it once because he has a small electric mower which is too small for his large lot. He wanted to rent it every other week, so now I just let him borrow it (free of charge) whenever he wants. He has even offered to service the mower for me the next time he borrows it! It has truly been a win-win scenario for both of us. The only losing party in this is the lawnmower manufacturer who missed out on selling 1 more brand new unit. But hey, I think they'll get over it...
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Posted by Ryan
Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:15:00 GMT
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the extra money that I earn from renting out stuff I'm not using anyway. In fact, I believe that for most people, their unused stuff can be the best investment in their "portfolio" when rented to neighbors for a small fee. But that's a story for another post...
I've found that the best part about loaning out my stuff through
Loanables is meeting the Borrowers. I've formed friendships with some of the of the people who have borrowed my stuff. This was somewhat of a surprise to me. When I first started using
Loanables, I thought that meeting Borrowers would be a hassle. After all, these were random people that I had no connection with. Isn't this the mentality that is so prevalent these days? If I don't know you, then I don't trust you. From what I see in the media, everybody is bad!
But it turns out that most of the people out there are -- believe it or not -- good people! Most of them are folks who live in my neighborhood, or at least my part of town. In a time when people seem to be drifting farther apart, it's nice to find something that brings neighbors closer together.
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