New research has found that home rental company Airbnb is pouring money into ‘grassroots lobbying’ organisations which are subverting local democracy.
We shine a light on Airbnb’s lobbying practices and outline some of the issues and negative impacts associated with their ‘Home Sharing’ or ‘Host’ Clubs.
Also see our ethical guide to Travel Booking Companies.
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Maimuna Ndow doesn’t mind lending her car to strangers, in fact it’s something she positively encourages.
Based in the swinging hipster suburb of Chorlton in south Manchester, Ndow is now part of a growing revolution of car-owners who are renting out their cars in a bid to tackle the climate crisis whilst making some welcome money on the side.
Ndow began her car lending journey last year, when the pioneering car sharing company Karshare launched in her neighbourhood in Manchester, following successful launches in Birmingham, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds and London.
“I’m the sort of person that likes to try something new,” says Ndow who works for Manchester International Festival.
“A few people were apprehensive about it, but I just see it as exciting. I wasn’t using my car and now someone else has the pleasure of using it.”
Car sharing and its contribution to fighting climate change
There are now around 33 million cars in the UK, but for a staggering 96% of the time they’re just parked up, quietly rusting away, doing nothing.
And with cars contributing around 25% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, Karshare is now aiming to free up some of these cars to help drive the fight against the climate crisis.
“If we’re going to reach net zero there’s no way we’re going to do it with the existing model of private car ownership,” says Katie McPhee from Karshare.
“We want to enable the shift to net zero by reducing the number of cars that have to be made and make it easy to get around without having to buy a new car. For every one car shared, we can take 14 off the road.”
“Our goal,” adds McPhee, “is to make sharing cars the norm and if you can make a little bit of extra cash along the way, then great.”
