How does the Sharing Economy link to COP26? | RentMy Skip to main content Skip to footer

How does the Sharing Economy link to COP26?

All eyes are now on COP26, the Climate Change Conference currently being held in Glasgow. It is critical that countries step up and make ambitious commitments that they will work on to deliver. These system wide changes are critical if we are to have any chance of staying below 1.5 degrees. In parallel to changes at Government level is the growth of the Sharing Economy and business models like ours, RentMy: the two are intrinsically linked and we need the top down changes from COP, alongside the innovation from sectors like the Sharing Economy, with sharing and circular business models like RentMy, to take us forward into a new economy. A rented future.

We all know that manufacturing anything new creates emissions, which means your carbon footprint increases every single time you buy something. Therefore it's far more costly - in terms of your carbon spend, as well as your back pocket - to buy products you only use now and then. Instead of incurring the carbon footprint of manufacturing the item and then shipping it to you, renting enables you to spread that carbon spend over many many more uses: in some cases renting means an item is used over twenty times more than the average use of our household items. Think of that electric saw, drill or piece of garden equipment that is gathering dust in your garage. How many more items do you have that other people could use? Alternatively if you need a specialised piece of equipment like a chainsaw or a leaf blower, why increase your carbon debt by buying the item when you could rent it for the few times a year that you need it? So, let’s stay tuned in to what is happening at COP26 but also look at the changes we can make ourselves. Check out the examples below of what the carbon cost of a single use item versus a shared item is... you'll see there is a BIG difference, so get sharing!!

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