Why buy when you can borrow? That’s the idea behind 32-year-old Micki Krimmel’s project – a website that facilitates lending and sharing within local communities. In an age where neighbors seem more like strangers, NeighborGoods.net encourages people to again borrow and lend as friends. “NeighborGoods is a service that connects friends and neighbors to save money and resources by sharing stuff they already own instead of purchasing new stuff,” Krimmel explained.

NeighborGoods is part of a worldwide shift: “A growing movement,” Krimmel said, referencing a book called What’s Mine is Yours that features NeighborGoods (see video above). “The idea is that the 20^th century was all about hyper-consumption and shopping and owning things. And now the 21^st century is going to be more about sharing; more of an access economy as opposed to an ownership economy. So NeighborGoods is definitely on the forefront of that movement and we’re really excited about that.”

Building upon concepts behind popular websites like Craigslist and Freecycle, NeighborGoods uses Google maps and online social networking to enable users to recapture latent value in things they want to keep. Instead of selling or giving, members are sharing or even renting.

Just three months after the site launched, they had “almost $3 million dollars worth of inventory being shared on the site,” Krimmel said.

But that’s just a fraction of what could be shared. Krimmel said Americans spend roughly $22 billion a year on self-storage space. That’s $22 billion dollars worth of stuff that is often collecting dust. Now, through NeighborGoods, local communities use that stuff to help each other save money, encourage re-use, reduce consumption and perhaps even pocket a bit of cash.

Yet the website, which officially launched nationwide a year ago, promotes more than the sustainable sharing of stuff. It also builds relationships. “In my neighborhood… we have like this support system built in,” Krimmel said. “We watch each other’s houses when we go out of town and walk each others’ dogs. And really I met all those people on NeighborGoods.”

Sometimes members get still more than a needed item, house sitters and dog walkers though: “NeighborGoods got somebody a job,” Krimmel said. “I also know someone who borrowed a video camera on NeighborGoods to film a contest entry for a non-profit and that entry ended up getting his project funded. So yeah, there’s already a lot of cool, life-changing experiences that are happening already that we hear about all the time.”

NeighborGoods was awarded the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW award for Best Bootstrapped Startup in March. Its founder, Krimmel, who also plays roller derby for the L.A. Derby Dolls, is no stranger to leading sustainable development and instigating change. She has worked with online community development projects for nearly a decade, leading social media campaigns for projects like An Inconvenient Truth among others. Her more than 12,000 followers on Twitter show that much of what Krimmel has to share resonates with others. For now, she is focusing on the idea of making borrowing the new buying: “I’d love it for NeighborGoods to be the first place you go whenever you need something,” Krimmel admitted. “Instead of going to Amazon to buy something it would be better if everyone borrowed stuff. That’s where we hope to get.”

What items have you borrowed or bought second-hand lately?