I’ve written about Freecycle and LETS in earlier posts. Now, continuing with the series on sharing stuff and working together, I want to introduce you to Ecomodo.
Ecomodo lets you “lend and borrow each other’s everyday objects, skills and spaces with confidence.” They’ve thought carefully about the “with confidence”: the borrower and the item are rated after each transaction; lenders can request security deposits; and the site offers insurance. You can create a ‘lending circle’ in your neighbourhood, so it is closely tied to real world communities. For example, Exmouth Town had a public lending circle. Update 20 March 2015: Ecomodo has now closed.
Bid & Borrow is very similar to Ecomodo, but I think less user-friendly. Again, you can create a ‘sharing network’ in your neighbourhood, and on both sites you can post a wanted ad. Companies can advertise their goods for hire, but I think this detracts, and Bid & Borrow’s local search doesn’t work well. But still, there might be something you need here that isn’t on Ecomodo. Update 21 March 2016: It appears that Bid & Borrow is no more.
* Shakespeare didn’t always get it right.