Whether you're talking about money, goods or even space, these days "waste" has become a bit of a dirty word. Today, consumers are looking for positive ways to avoid it. They're beautifying unused or neglected public spaces with guerilla gardening; they're sharing their pantry's overstock and garden surplus by food swapping, and they're taking advantage of bountiful harvests found on public and private property with voluntary harvesting. With waste top of mind, the latest waste elimination challenge focuses on the garden.

Similar to voluntary harvesting, land sharing focuses on utilizing un- or underused land to grow locally produced food. While there's recently been significant press coverage of the trend, it's still a relatively new idea to the mainstream public. Ventures such as the UK's Adopt-A-Garden and LandShare, Vancouver's Sharing Backyards (also slowly growing in US cities), and San Francisco's MyFarm provide online forums in which consumers can connect to offer and request information about unused gardening spaces in their areas. As the focus on sustainable, local, and socially and environmentally conscious initiatives grows stronger, we expect land sharing programs to become even more common in the near future.