Saving the world…one move at a time!…by Jodie Emmett

The following guest blog post is by Jodie Emmett, chief mover and shaker from MeeMeep.com…

MeeMeep.com is excited to support the 1 million women SAVE initiative. With this month’s focus on DRIVE, we are delighted to tell you about MeeMeep.com – a new online business with a practical approach to reducing the amount of traffic and pollution on our roads.

Our story at MeeMeep began about three years ago, when my husband, Rob Emmett, was sitting in traffic looking our his car window, frustrated by all those empty cars, trucks and vans choking our roads. Everyone sitting there in isolation, oblivious to each other’s needs and wants. Unaware that a small amount of goodwill and planning could reduce the amount of traffic and pollution on our roads.

He had a light bulb moment, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could harness the movement of people as they go about their daily business and put it to good use”, he thought. “How could we somehow connect the physical power of the people with the digital power of the internet?”

So Rob quickly decided to do two things: One, to buy a scooter and two, to start MeeMeep.com. Buying a scooter went part way to solving his traffic frustration and meemeep.com is going that one step further!

So working with the idea of helping people to help each other – MeeMeep was born.  A type of social moving; MeeMeep is an online marketplace. It works by people registering online to join the movement. Once registered, the network connects people, trucks, cars, vans and bicycles already in motion to people who need stuff moved. An introduction is given online, a fee negotiated between the two parties, and the goods are delivered.  So for people on the move, they can make a little extra money and for people with things to move, they can save time and money. And it helps everyone help the environment, by reducing the number of vehicles making the same trip.

Very early on we discovered the key contributors to traffic congestion and pollution on our roads:-

• Courier vans and removalist trucks spend half their time on the roads empty or close to empty.
• Our daily commuter activities contribute significantly to traffic congestion and pollution with over 8% of emissions occurring at these times.
•  Over 12 million cars on our roads are passenger vehicles and the average number of people per car at any given time is 1.2. This leaves a significant amount of spare capacity within each vehicle.

Since it’s launch in October last year, MeeMeep has quickly gained traction with over 1000 members joining up and 350 moving jobs being undertaken to date.  It is proving to be a win:win for everyone, where a small amount of foresight and preparation, is resulting in a big win for the environment.

MeeMeep sits squarely within the new wave of collaborative consumption, a movement identified by TIME magazine as one of the ’10 ideas that will change the world’. This is where emerging technologies enable the direct connection of people and in doing so disrupts outmoded ways of doing business. Collaborative consumption is about connecting for the purpose of sharing, swapping, moving and trading and it’s occurring on a scale never imagined before.

At MeeMeep, we want to save the world one move at a time…can you help us do that?

About the author: Jodie Emmett, Is the chief Mover and Shaker for operations and business development. You can connect with MeeMeep.com via their blog, Facebook or Twitter.