“In 2008, £1.7 billion was spent on unwanted Christmas presents. The equivalent to £36 per person and 46% of us are still hoarding ours a year later.” Fact borrowed from Ebay and YouGov.
Each year Christmas is a costly personal challenge for everyone. In pursuit of keeping the dream alive we all spend money making ill informed guesses about what others may want. This results in an average of expenditure on presents of approx £500 per person, and yet more stuff collecting dust in people’s houses before eventually seeing the light of day at a car boot sale 5 years later.
Ecomodo has another idea that can benefit everyone, the environment and keep the Christmas spirit alive throughout the festive season and beyond. We want to reinvent Christmas.
Our proposition is that you don’t spend money on others and buy just one present for yourself. If everyone bought one present of something they really want and make it available to others to borrow, you would give everyone you know access to more stuff than they could imagine.
Your present to yourself could be a new tool, a tent, a kitchen gadget, a surf board, a special dress or perhaps even a learning a new skill such as massage or floristry. Everyone gets at least one thing they love, no-one spends more than they can afford and everyone has access to loads of new stuff which will inspire them to try new things and save them money. If we all spent £500 on our ‘one present’ and if we assume that most people would willingly lend to approx 30 people around them this means that on December 26th everyone would have access to £ 15k worth of new stuff to make our lives easier or more fun.
Already, people all across the UK are lending their everyday objects, skills and spaces for free, for a fee or for charity. By using Ecomodo’s lending circles it’s really possible to reinvent Christmas, simply set up a circle, invite the people in your life to join and get everyone to add their ‘one present’ to share.
And it needn’t stop at Christmas. You can add all the other stuff you have lying about and help create a fantastic community resource ready to be enhanced every Christmas. Keep the Christmas spirit alive all year round and help the people around you.
More interesting Christmas over consumption facts borrowed from Do the Green Thing
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Tags: borrow, collaborative consumption, green living, lend, prevent waste, reuse, save money
December 2, 2011 at 3:58 pm
Great post which I have shared on Facebook. Personally I would feel uncomfortable spending more than £50 on an individual gift for myself. Maybe I’m unusual…