Yerdled yet? New shopper tools save money and planet

Have you yerdled yet? This isn't a funky mix of yodeling and hurdling, but a new way to shop online — for next to nothing.

On Yerdle.com, consumers swap stuff they're not using — say, the skirt that's three sizes too small — for clothes that fit or other items they need. They exchange in-house credits and only pay for shipping, typically, $2 to $4.

Their new venue: the collaborative economy 2.0. As mobile devices make it easier to share goods, new apps are helping people save money and — by sending less to landfills — lower their environmental impact. They're also bucking efforts, notably, Google Shopping Express and Amazon's June debut of its Fire phone, to boost buying.

"People are sharing cars and hotel rooms — why aren't they sharing things?" says Yerdle co-founder Adam Werbach, noting garages are often filled with useful stuff that's gathering dust. He says his company, which launched a redesigned iPhone app this year, aims to give the second-hand market a face-lift and displace 25% of what people buy.

"Sharing is the new shopping," says Werbach, who was the Sierra Club's youngest president in 1996 at age 23. To get Yerdle going, he teamed with Andy Ruben, Wal-Mart's former chief sustainability officer, and Carl Tashian, a Zipcar co-founder.

Re-use is hardly new. But the rise of e-commerce is pushing the concept beyond thrift stores run by charities such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army to websites such as eBay, Craigslist and Freecycle. Smartphones and social media are prompting a new wave of companies, such as Airbnb and RelayRides, which allow people to rent out bedrooms and cars, and others such as Swapdom, which help them trade goods.

Each works a bit differently, but Yerdle and similar auction site Listia offer all sorts of items — from jewelry and clothes to cameras and tablets — for no cost (other than shipping.) They give members credits for signing up and giving away items that they can use to acquire other things. Listia also sells credits — something Yerdle may do in the future. Some goods are picked up, if both parties live in the same area, but most are mailed.

"I see this as an accelerating trend. It has a lot of promise," says Kit Yarrow, consumer psychologist at Golden Gate University and author of Decoding the New Consumer Mind. "Young people have grown up with a different sense of ownership. They're sharing-oriented."

Yarrow expects the new sites will attract others, too. "They build on the nation's puritanical value of not being wasteful," she says, adding it gives people "emotional permission" to shop. She says sharing is an old-fashioned concept — a cup of sugar from the next-door neighbor or baby clothes from friends — that's getting a new twist as communities move online.

That doesn't mean it's a sure sell. In an age when people can order just about anything with a single click on a cellphone, the idea of boxing up stuff and schlepping it to UPS or the post office might seem a waste of time.

"Our biggest challenge is to make it easy and convenient enough," says Gee Chuang, co-founder and CEO of Listia, which launched in 2009. Still, he says his Mountain View, Calif.-based company now has more than 7 million members and 200,000 available items. He says dropping off a bag of clothes at Goodwill may be more efficient, but the giver doesn't get the joy of knowing who will benefit.

Listia also partners with retailers Wal-Mart and Best Buy, so shoppers can use credits to buy new things, or in the case of Amazon, gift cards.

Werbach says much of the second-hand economy is "dusty and dirty," so he's trying to make it a pleasant retail experience. For those in San Francisco, where Yerdle is based, there's a "share" spot for people to pick up and drop off. For others, Yerdle has pre-negotiated low shipping rates and sends mailing labels to the "givers" who are paid by the "winners."

He says mailing items incurs fewer greenhouse gas emissions than manufacturing new products.

Yerdle now has more than 120,000 members and at any given time, its iPhone app lists about 8,000 items, the price of which is determined either by the "giver" or by bidding. To expand trading, Werbach says he plans to redesign the website and launch an Android app.

Esther Yeh, a 29-year-old optometrist in Emeryville, Calif., is an avid yerdler. She says most of the items traded are in "superb condition." She's seen motorcycles and cars posted, as well as super-cheap items such as glue sticks. She's given away about 150 items, including a new Bella Cucina rocket blender, and received about 40, including an Apple keyboard.

"My husband hates it and thinks it's a big waste of time," she says, because he prefers to throw cheap stuff away and sell more valuable items. She says she wants even basic goods to be reused. Now that she's received a few choice items, she says her husband is warming up to the idea.

"It's rewarding to get rid of stuff you're not using. It's liberating," says Valerie Taylor, a 43-year-old teacher from Houston, who says she's a bit of a packrat. "I'm streamlining my closet so I know what I have," says Taylor, who's been posting clothes that no longer fit and has received — in return — 70-year-old photography books for her dad and finger puppets for her nieces.

Werbach got the idea for Yerdle after a trip to India, where he met women setting up "saving circles." They'd save money to buy things that they could share with each other. After leaving the Sierra Club, he launched the environmental consulting and communications firm now known as Saatchi & Saatchi S. But like Ruben, he wanted to do more to address the planet's pressing needs.

So did Ian Monroe, who teaches courses on climate change at Stanford University and had flown to 21 countries to set up renewable energy projects. "The hypocrisy in my own life started to bother me," he says, noting that flying can easily offset the environmental gains of other lifestyle choices such as reusing bags or driving a Prius.

On Earth Day, April 22, he launched nationally a website — Oroeco.com — that tallies the carbon value of purchases, food consumption, mode of transportation and energy usage. The estimates are based on life-cycle analyses developed by the University of California, Berkeley's CoolClimate research group.

The website suggests win-win ways consumers can save money and lower their carbon footprints, such as reducing consumption of red meat. "What's great," says Oroeco's Chief Technology Officer Kristin Cummings "is that many actions that improve climate also save a lot of money."