James Moody is the founder of TuShare, an online sharing platform in Australia.He talks all things TuShare and the gift economy with Darren Sharp.
What motivated you to start TuShare?
It was both a personal passion and direct evidence that motivated me to start TuShare. In 2010 I wrote a book about the next wave of innovation called ‘The Sixth Wave: How to succeed in a resource-limited world’. It made the bold prediction that ‘resource efficiency’ would be the next wave of innovation harnessing the power of waste as a source of opportunity.
This got me thinking deeply around all of the idle assets that sit in people’s homes, and what we might do to help them see their full lifespan. So as far back as 2011 I was talking with my co-founder Kohei Nishiyama about ideas to engage people and bring greater resource efficiency in to our everyday life. In 2012 we decided to create TuShare and set on our journey to help people make use of the idle assets in their homes.
How is TuShare different from other giving networks like Freecycle?
When we started to think how we could make this possible we talked to various community groups and two big things stood out: sharing (rather than selling) was a key motivation and ensuring we made it as safe and easy as possible. We realized that to do this we really needed to create an online platform that was smartphone enabled that could solve two big things – how to make it easy for members to see what others are doing, but at the same time keeping email (and physical) addresses private.
What ended up was TuShare – a very social ‘giving marketplace’ which also allows a delivery option for people to send things to one another.
What’s TuShare’s business model? How do you make money through a platform that helps people give stuff away for free?
TuShare offers our service free to members who might want to use the system and pick things up from one another. However, we also have a delivery option, allowing members to organise door-to-door delivery, which is where we eventually see our revenue coming from.
TuShare keeps track of how much waste people are avoiding. Why is encouraging this type of behaviour change so important?
We believe being able to accurately measure the impact we’ve had through sharing is very important. The TuShare system functions on weight, so that every member can easily see how many kilos of items they have shared, received and saved from landfill. Did you know that one kilogram of cotton requires 10,000 litres of water to produce? If we start thinking about the embodied energy, water and raw resources in these products, we can see how little actions can add up to something great.
You say that giving is scientifically proven to make us happy. Can you expand on the research behind that?
We love that TuShare is pure giving – no swapping, bartering, selling or points. This not only makes it easier (since there is no negotiation involved) but there is a great deal of research which shows that an act of generosity can significantly enhance what is called ‘subjective wellbeing’. This is even born through the language we use. Did you know that the Latin origin of the word ‘Community’ is the word ‘munero’ or ‘munis’ which means ‘to give’.
What’s the current state of the Australian sharing economy? What changes do you think we can expect in the next 3-5 years?
Like other countries around the world, we are seeing many sharing businesses in Australia start to challenge the way that we interact with each other and the things we use. In particular I love that the sharing economy helps us see everything more in terms of a service, rather than simply a product or a thing – this ultimately decouples the use of that service from resource production, and helps us shift to a more sustainable society.
What’s your favourite TuShare member story?
Beyond just sharing, TuShare has connected people and even started friendships. Two mothers, one located in Brisbane, the other in Sydney, met on TuShare and worked out that they have children about a year apart. They also quickly realized they have the same taste in clothes – which is perfect given how quickly kids grow out of things and have since become friends. They would never have connected otherwise. The person giving things away knows they are going to a good home, and getting a lot of gratitude, while the person receiving them is getting all these clothes for just the cost of postage.