Collaborative consumption has a huge role to play in shifting attitudes to owning more ‘stuff’ and showing up those who talk about sustainable consumption and shifting more units in the same breath.
Corporate efforts so far have mainly dealt with work around reducing waste, reducing resource use in production, raising labour standards, promoting certification standards and adding socioeconomic benefits to products and services. All good but, at its heart sustainable consumption must mean buy/use less stuff.
In the context of big global shifts and the rise of the new middle classes, the big sustainability question is consumption. The world is about to experience more demand for prosperity-generating stuff than it ever has and, unless things change, it will attempt to deliver this with a system which we know isn’t cut out to do the job.
I’m really excited to be speaking at the EABIS 2010 event. My topic: Prosperity and Brazil’s new middle classes. The basic premise is that if we foist a high consumption lifestyle on all the new consumers these markets will very quickly pop.
new middle classes consumption route
I’m looking at how sustainability, the experience of citizenship, service design, co-creation and the digital world demand new techniques and strategies from companies. These will enable them to build new relationships with these new consumers and redefine what it means to live well.
Collaborative consumption makes up part of solving the puzzle. I have been looking into in more detail thanks to the work done by Rachel Alstrom and Roo Rogers (great site here + TEDxSydney talk here). Boiled down: access is more important than ownership. Rent don’t buy.
Access not ownership
This rethinking of use and how we define are ourselves – not with what we possess but what we have access to and what we experience – will help a lot of pre-crisis relics readjust to new realities. Currently, few companies will feel they are in position to grasp the idea. They are still firefighting as we go through this volatile rebalancing where tried and tested assumptions fail to get any purchase.
Collaborative consumption fits into other ideas that are gaining momentum as we shift from away the hyperconsumption model. For example, building stuff that lasts (and kickstarting export industries) ties into lots of different strands of thinking about how destructive the ‘pile ‘em high sell ‘em cheap’ ethos has been.
Product cycles have squeezed build quality (and manufacturing wages) to create a system that is at breaking point. This system, also recognised as contributing to imbalances in the global economy, is feigning inability to right itself against a backdrop of a jobs and growth discussion that leaves little room for qualitative debate.
Collaborative means community
Modularity, upcycling and reconditioning all branch off co-consumption as do other ideas around sharing (e.g. jobsharing, land/office sharing) A lot of these concepts come with communities built around them. These communities help to generate meaning and value around the shared experiences of making and using these products and services.
This all feeds into redefining prosperity and making consumption fit into the world that we are moving into. Forget high income countries, the consumer power of the world’s new middle classes, and how business and government interact with them, will decide what happens to this century.
Selling less, selling better
Companies in this consumer space need to get on with adjusting to this rebalancing environment and work on:
- Getting as tight as possible on lifecycle by squeezing as much water, energy and materials out of the production process.
- Designing products and services that fit the social,economic and environmental lives of their new customers (start talking with new consumers)
- Reconfiguring their approach to making things so that access not ownership is their customer proposition.
Measuring value
This brings us back to the metrics/measurement question of wealth and happiness. A neat little example emerged the other day of why the game is up for GDP when a senior doctor advised that statins be handed out with Big Macs. We don’t live in such a zero sum world do we?
Collaborative consumption is a central part of this sustainable consumption puzzle. So yes, let’s make coke bottles thinner and use organic cotton, add social benefits to products and build hybrid cars. But anyone who says we don’t need to buy less is going to struggle to build successful long-term relationships with new (and old) consumers.
Check out/add to the #collcons hashtag for great examples of collaborative consumption.
Also see:
Resetting retail (saving our cities)
From thought leadership to mass collaboration
Rebuilding blocks: sustainability, economics, design
Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (for everyone?)
Thanks for reading. Please tweet if you like or share your thoughts in the comments below
