Last month, a startup in China failed miserably when it replicated the whole bike-sharing concept with umbrellas — as in, pay a certain fee to use brollies for a stipulated amount of time, and just hang it somewhere in a public space for another person to use. But humans being humans, said startup lost nearly all of its 300,000 umbrellas when folks just brought them home to keep for themselves, reported Shanghaiist.
In Singapore, Member of Parliament (MP) for Sembawang GRC Ong Ye Kung tried to replicate the idea of umbrella sharing, and we’re pleased to tell you that it fared a lot better here than it did in China. Kung conducted an “experiment” a couple weeks back at Sembawang MRT station, in which umbrellas were left on each side of a road where rain always gets in, despite the covered link way. The idea here was to let folks use the umbrellas to cross the road, and leave them at their designated racks at the other side for others in need.
However, a few hours into the initiative, all the umbrellas were gone. Kung believed that the residents may have thought it was some kind of product promotion. With nobody around to clarify about what they’re supposed to do with the umbrellas — of course people would just grab one and take it home.
That all changed when volunteers plopped themselves at the stations and explained to residents how the initiative works.
“And an amazing thing happened,” wrote the MP in a Facebook post. “Residents started to contribute their umbrellas. I took four from home and contributed too.”
The initiative seems to be working well weeks into the start of the experiment, as Kung noticed last Thursday (Aug 17) that residents continued the spirit of sharing umbrellas in the community.
“I will monitor the scheme further, before expanding to other parts of my constituency,” he enthused.
One thing to note is the fact that the experiment only worked when there was someone stationed at the racks to keep an eye on things. We imagine the situation would be highly different when there aren’t any volunteers around to cast judgement, but hey, let’s keep the faith in humanity going.
