What we've done on the CC Team

Hi all readers of my blog (I know that sounds dumb but I never know how to start this thing), I haven't updated since the Collaborative Consumption video by Rachel Botsman, so for those who aren't up to speed on our current G&T II project, we have split into two teams to try an accomplish our goals for the Mother Earth/Go green unit. I personally chose to join the collaborative consumption team because I was inspired by Botsman's TED talk and the documentary Tapped. I always knew humans wasted material goods, and why shouldn't we?; when theres ads on TV encouraging you to buy this that and the other thing to make you happy or enhance your lifestyle. Everything from makeups and lotions to enhance your beauty to flat screen TV's and big stereos for entertainment . But when I watched Tapped and learned about all the plastic and trash that builds up; I realized where all our thousands of material possessions end up. All the packaging from our junk,simply put, ends up in the ocean which damages the ecosystem and which will eventually damage us if we don't realize whats happening and put  a stop to it. Listening to Botsman I realized that it's not so much the stuff that people actually want but rather the experience. People don't necessarily want to own hard cover old school text books to educate themselves but rather the knowledge from within. So I thought if we could just get the world to see that we don't need material stuff, then maybe we could make a real difference for the good of our global community.


Another thing I realized during my collaborative consumption research is that I have oodles of junk just sitting in  my room because I have a fear of throwing things out, and I believe lots of other people have the same fear. I never throw birthday cards away so I have every one  I've ever gotten since for as long as I can remember in a bag in my desk, because someone cared enough to write it so I feel it would be cruel to just throw it away as if I didn't care. I keep every paper from English in case it comes in handy for college. I keep every single sheet of band music I've played since 6th grade in a binder, just to track my progress and to play them later if I ever get bored. I keep shoe boxes, broken watches, every earring that i can't find the match to, and even the cassette tapes I listened to before I had CD's and my eventual iPod, the list goes on and on and on. In essence I guess you could say I'm a border -line hoarder or a pack-rat. I just feel that all those items have a memory and a story and I would be stupid just to throw away a precious memory. But from this project I've begun to realize its just stuff. I don't need it. It just takes up space and when I'm gone it will take up even more space in a landfill somewhere. So step by step I've begun to throw things out. Every weekend from the start of this project I've gone through different boxes, folders, binders, and begun to just recycle paper or throw out garbage.

But enough about my personal changes due to our collaborative consumption research. As a team, Marcus, Damini, and I visited about 24 teachers and a few secretaries and asked them if there was anything in their rooms they didn't use and that just took up space. About 80% of them replied yes and that the material was either outdated or no longer part of an adapted curriculum. Most of them wanted to know why we were asking so we explained to them the idea of Swap 4 Schools which is an extension of swap.com which enables schools to trade things they don't use or need for things they want. For instance if American Pageant HS has a set of 80 Geometry books, and we have a set of 75 Literature books we can trade. However a problem we constantly ran into was that most of the things we don't use are outdated so if we were to give them away we would have to give it to a less fortunate school and probably not get anything in return. But the main point we wanted to make was that out of a fraction of the teachers and staff interviewed 80% said there was just books or file cabinets or old school projectors that just take up space in the classroom or office.


 Now I am currently drafting a letter based on the statistics gathered from a variety of our teachers. Eventually we plan to send the letter to the principle asking if he is interested in participating in Swap 4 Schools.
In closing I would like to say the idea of collaborative consumptions has drastically changed my views on my life and the world, and I definitely feel it is something I will continue to think about.