These tool-lending libraries are just one example of an often-overlooked part of the sharing economy: networks of people who share resources to cut down on their purchases and to make better use of the stuff they already have. This was the original conception of the sharing economy when it first truly emerged in 2008—to harness websites, apps, and other technology that put people in contact so they can get more mileage (and maybe even make money) from their underutilized cars, homes, and other assets. Think of City Car Share, the not-for-profit car-sharing service in the San Francisco Bay area that hopes to reduce traffic and congestion. Or, the free bookstore (“You can only take 150,000 [books] per day, per person,” says its website) in a gritty neighborhood of Baltimore.

This is a much different version of the sharing economy than the prevailing model of sprawling young companies—Airbnb, Lyft, Postmates, Uber—that are more akin to Silicon Valley’s next, new thing. The evolved version isn’t to everyone’s liking. “The frame of the sharing economy has been destroyed or radically challenged by people who are just trying to maximize their profits as their primary, sole goal,” says Adam Werbach, a former Sierra Club national president who co-founded Yerdle, a website and mobile app conceived as a means of encouraging people to give away their used goods. “When I think about the true sharing economy, I see libraries, parks, and common roads.”

Yerdle is just one example of this stratum of the sharing economy that is focused less on consumption than on its opposite. Werbach thought of the idea after visiting Mumbai, India, and learning about “saving circles”: groups of Indian women without formal credit who pool their savings to buy items they need. With two friends—veterans, respectively, of Walmart and Zipcar—he started the Internet-based company in 2012. They launched it on the day after Thanksgiving, the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season, with the goal of reducing by 25 percent the amount of stuff that people buy—to promote, as the company calls it, “unshopping."

Yerdle posts a photo of the item—clothes, toys, candlesticks, whatever—on its website, and anyone who has signed up can claim it. Membership is free, and Yerdle even pays for part of the shipping costs if the object weighs less than 10 pounds. The company, according to Werbach, has signed up a half-million members and averages 42,000 transactions a month. Yerdle received some of its estimated $5 million in startup funding from the investment fund associated with Patagonia, the outdoor-sportswear company. (Patagonia also donates some of its returned items of clothing to Yerdle for members to claim.) “We have a pretty large, lofty goal to try to displace what is being sold on Amazon and Walmart,” he says.