Hire Things – things for hire!

A recent report put out on climate change has called for a fifth of all household spending to be converted to hiring and renting. The report along with current trends of consumers questioning their spending is great news for New Zealand’s Hire Things who are ideally placed to take advantage of this new consciousness.

Commissioned by the British government the Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) says that overcoming our obsession with owning goods could be a “secret weapon” in meeting climate change targets.

“This is the first piece of research which shows the significant impact to the economy and the environment resource efficiency has” said Liz Goodwin, WRAP CEO.

The report identifies £143 billion of annual expenditure on goods that could have been used for longer instead of throwing them away early and buying new products. Using items for their full lifespan could save British consumers £47 billion a year.

By Sharing seldom used products with a number of people, the productivity of the product will be increased and the consumption of natural resources in the production stage reduced

Hiring instead of buying would cut emissions by about 2 per cent, of CO2 a year, through a fall in manufacturing and lower consumption of raw materials.

The research has important messages on the reduction of ownership of goods and getting lifetime optimization from our purchases.

“Why would anyone want to own that many things anyway? We need to have the confidence that we can get things when we need them but we don’t need to have them sitting beside us every day.” Said Liz Goodwin, WRAP CEO

What’s exciting for New Zealand is that we can take immediate action. Hire Things, already well established in the online hiring space is growing rapidly in consumer to consumer hiring. Hiring to and from each other within a community makes it easy to hire products you need with out having to buy them. Not everyone in the street needs to own a lawnmower, trailer or a tent. By sharing resources in this way you get much higher value from the things you own and purchases can be better quality, getting their lifetime use before becoming landfill.

Hire Things already has 8000+ members making a difference not just to their own wallets but to the environment and the economy too.

The WRAP report