Last month’s Sustainability Theme, the Sharing Economy, continues this month, challenging the idea of owning all we need, of always buying brand-new. There are many ways of sharing or passing on time, skills, equipment and excess.  Benefits can be:

• stronger communities
• reduced costs and storage needs
• less landfill and incineration
• savings in energy and production resources

We are all familiar with sharing our time by volunteering. (www.pcvs.co.uk 32-34 Cromwell Road, PE1 2EA offers volunteering opportunities.) We have probably also shared resources from public libraries, charity shops, car-boot and garage sales, and even toy libraries or tool-hire companies. We may already use websites such as www.ebay.co.uk for the sale of goods and services or www.gumtree.com, a British online classified ads & community website, for buying & selling or www.freecycle.org and www.ilovefreegle.org/explore/peterborough-freegle that facilitate giving.

Further websites to try are: www.enterprisecarclub.co.uk and https://liftshare.com (car-share and lift-sharing); www.airbnb.co.uk (staying in someone’s house); https://toogoodtogo.co.uk or https://olioex.com (sharing excess food).

Locally, take spare food for a community meal to Park St Baptist Church (Mondays). You can check out Peterborough’s approach to this sharing economy at: http://www.futurepeterborough.com/circular-city Through the Council website, www.sharepeterborough.com, businesses or organisations can share facilities, spare resources or skills.

An excellent summary of other sharing ideas, from parking to work space, and from delivering a parcel to walking your dog, can be found at www.justpark.com.

Suggested listening: go to https://www.quaker.org.uk/our-work/podcast for A Quaker Take which so far treats the following subjects: climate, immigration, Christmas, parenting, allyship, God, peace education. Also interesting and informative is the earlier series Q:witness.

Green Originals (BBC Radio 4 archive) reflects on the pioneering scientists, campaigners and communicators of the last 60 years who've swum against the tide to influence our opinion and behaviour on the environment. It starts with Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring. 18 episodes are available, each lasting 15 minutes.

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