Before people used money to purchase items in stores, they would barter – or trade – for the things they required. If a farmer needed shoes for his kids? No problem. He could swap them for eggs or chickens.
Now a new platform is bringing back this simple idea of trading what you have for the things you need. Shareitt, an Israeli startup, makes it easy to exchange second-hand items instead of purchasing new and it is saving money, conserving resources, and helping to protect the environment.
How the app works
The platform allows you to “sell” your items for Shareitt coins (points) that can be used to “purchase” items from other people with no money ever changing hands, according to GeekTime. To get things started, users are awarded coins when they sign up and then can earn more by referring friends to join the online marketplace.
There are tens of thousands of items in different categories including clothing, toys, books, electronics, and appliances that are being traded by its 50,000 uses, reported The Jerusalem Post, and more than 120,000 items have already been traded since Shareitt was founded in 2019 by CEO Michael Malul and Arie Ben David.
Malul told JPost that the vision behind the app came to him from his own life experiences. “The idea came from having a family and seeing our children exchanging their clothes, books, and toys all the time with each other,” he said.
In fact, the people who use the app the most are parents. “They get their children clothes, toys, new books, the right books for schools, costumes… it’s endless,” Malul said. “And on top of that, they have to spend money on cosmetics, books for themselves, and the home.”
By uploading the items like outgrown clothing, and trading them for points to use on replacements, parents are saving an estimated 26 percent of the cost of buying new.
More sustainable way to shop
When it comes to sustainability, second hand purchases or trades are the way to go. Especially when it comes to clothing. According to the organization Sustain Your Style, the fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world.
Since the advent of fast fashion, clothing has become more disposable. But only 15 percent of used clothing is recycled every year, the rest goes into landfills. Some of the ways the organization suggests reducing the impact of fast fashion is to buy secondhand clothing in a used clothing store, rent clothing, or swap it. That’s exactly what Shareitt does.
The popularity of the app shows that people are ready to move away from fast fashion and move to a sustainable future. “The whole concept is environmentally smart,” Malul told JPost. “We have to move in that direction; we have to take a more responsible, sustainable approach.”
