Pumpipumpe may sound bawdy, perhaps even more so when you discover it’s a new sharing community, but the origins of its name are actually quite innocuous.

The Swiss based project started out as a way of letting cyclists with a flat tyre know which houses in a neighbourhood had a bike pump they could borrow. They did this by putting a sticker of a bike pump on their mailboxes. The scheme has since expanded into a system that lets neighbours advertise any items they have to lend. From a tent to a telescope, a fondue set to a chess set, those who want to get involved, simply order a free pack of stickers from the project’s website and place the stickers of what they’re prepared to lend on their mailbox.

There seems something rather wholesome about this sort of offline networking; a new German platform, Food-sharing seeks to "reinstate the spiritual, non-monetary value of food" by connecting people who have an excess with anyone who might need or want it. The self-policing, honour-based platform designates exchange hotspots, sets a basic set of rules and stipulates that no money change hands in the process.