In November of this year, Joanna Basinger launched a new website called ClosestCloset.com.  Unlike most web-based start-ups, ClosestCloset.com was not created to market or sell any goods or services.   In fact, Joanna isn’t selling anything….except maybe the ideas of community, sharing and conservation. Joanna created ClosestCloset.com, a swap and share website, to encourage people to donate or loan items they have sitting at home and to borrow or accept items from others doing the same.

Joanna, a registered nurse by trade and a mother of five, dreamed up the idea of ClosestCloset just two months ago, after what she says was about “80 hours per week of coffee and Google.”   It is Joanna’s hope that through this new social networking forum, people will come to lean on each other, build a sense of community and conserve resources at the same time.  “There are services out there that ‘promote’ community, and I love them,” Joanna says, “but I wanted something deeper and more mutually satisfying.   I wanted something that focused more on long-term trusting relationships within local communities.”

ClosestCloset.com works basically like this: members can join for a lifetime membership fee of $10.00.   Members are then required to post 10 things that they are willing to loan to someone or services that they are willing to provide to someone free of charge.   When this minimum is met, members are then free to post their own requests and to accept items and services from other members. There is also a member feedback system in place, much like ebay, the immensely popular buying and selling website.  This way, those who abuse the ClosestCloset process and receive poor ratings may have their memberships revoked.

The idea is that people will begin to create sharing networks in their own community, saving time and possibly energy as well.   As Joanna explains it, “In order to truly make a commitment to protecting our planet, it’s going to mean putting a halt, or at least a major decrease in production.   At ClosestCloset.com, we are contributing to that halt, or decrease, by opening up to the idea of  ’sharing.’   The more we share, the less we need, and less is produced.” Joanna also believes that ClosestCloset is a greener alternative to traditional donation and recycling centers.   Unlike a center, Joanna has no need for a storefront or warehouse and her only overhead is the maintenance of the website itself.   “Even donation centers, that we know and love, utilize some of the same concepts,” she says, “but they also utilize space, transportation and utilities.”

ClosestCloset collects revenue from membership fees (membership is currently approaching 100 after just one month) and Joanna also plans to sell advertising space to other businesses that share her mission and goals.   But there is a catch: advertisers must also become active members on the site, and must be willing to post and share the same requisite 10 items.   Joanna hopes that someday in the near future, the website will earn enough revenue to be self-sustaining.   For the time-being, however, ClosestCloset is her “big present to my community,” she says.

Joanna is looking for ways to conserve energy and resources on a personal level as well.   She works out of her home and she says that if and when she brings on additional staff, they will work out of their own homes as well.   A self-described “greeny-in-training,” Joanna says she is open to learning more about how to implement energy-saving measures in her home as well as in her business. She has recently joined a permaculture meet-up group and hopes to learn from that experience as well.   But as Joanna points out, there is more to being green than simply using green products around the home. She asks, “What types of resources are being utilized every time something is made?  Manufactured? Transported across the globe or country?  Every time we share something with another person or family, we have saved all that went into its creation.”

Source: Pays to Live Green

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