While working at the Nokia Research Center during the 2000s, the two founders of CoReorient were wondering why the only solutions proposed to address global sustainability challenges seemed to be tighter regulations or expensive infrastructure by bureaucratic governments doing eventually too little too late. The founders had followed and participated in the rise of early grass-roots sharing communities, which were organizing with the help of internet forums and then social media. Their vision was that if sharing was made easy enough and fair for everyone in the local community, a massive reduction of CO2 and material footprint could be achieved while also improving their everyday life and social well-being. This would allow billions of middle class consumers to achieve a good standard of living without destroying the planet.CoReorient was founded in 2011. The initial focus was on social deliveries, because it seemed especially wasteful that so many people were driving a ton of steel back and forth just to transport a bag of groceries from the supermarket. Despite the obvious sustainability impacts, rigid regulations were a showstopper in Finland. Based on user requests, the focus then moved to the more concrete and easier to understand concept of sharing goods and assistance within the local community. The road from the early 24/7 sharing facility prototypes in 2014 to the current polished and productized platform in 2018 has involved a lot of hard work by a growing team of passionate professionals as well as networking with stakeholders from all sectors and walks of life. It is even more impressive that this was achieved with a very limited budget due to the lack of funding in Finland for businesses pursuing sustainability or social impacts.We are now getting close to a solution that we set out to develop all those years ago. Extending from equipment rental into the platform and services ordered through application, people can make their everyday lives not just more sustainable, but also easier.
Contact:
Harri Paloheimo, CEO at CoReorient / PiggyBaggy / Liiteri.net
harri.paloheimo (at) coreorient.com
+358 50 4836388
Kalasatama, 2014
