Collaborative Consumption: Towards a Resource-Saving Consumption Culture

Kristin Leismann,Holger Rohn,Martina Schmitt,Carolin Baedeker

doi:10.3390/resources2030184

Abstract

Resource efficiency in production and technological innovations are inadequate for considerably reducing the current use of natural resources. Both social innovations and a complementary and equally valued strategy of sustainable consumption are required: goods must be used longer, and services that support collaborative consumption (CC) patterns must be extended. “Using rather than owning” strategies, such as product sharing, have the potential to conserve resources. Based on the results of different German studies, this article highlights the resource-saving potentials of CC patterns and recommendations proposed for policies and further research questions. The purpose of this paper is to show that a general resource-saving potential can be realized by “use rather than own” schemes, depending on the application field and the framework for implementation. CC is suitable for making a positive contribution to achieving the Factor 10 target by playing an important role in changing consumer patterns.

Highlights

One of the major challenges currently facing academia, business, society and the political sector is the issue of resource efficiency and conservation
“Factor 10” approach was operationalized in an application-oriented manner following the development of the material input for certain service units (MIPS) concept (MIPS stands for material input per service unit) [1], which can be used to calculate the material input per service unit [3,4,5,6,7,8]
Enormous efforts must be made to create such an “eight-ton society”— on the part of business, which would have to make products and services along the entire value-chain considerably more efficient, consistent and adequate when it comes to resources, and on the part of the State, which would have to create economic policy framework conditions that would be conducive to more sustainable production and consumption and that, in addition, would have to provide infrastructures resulting in the consumption of considerably fewer resources [13,14,15,16,17]

Summary

Introduction

One of the major challenges currently facing academia, business, society and the political sector is the issue of resource efficiency and conservation In this connection, the necessity to achieve an economic, effective use of natural resources—in order to continue to generate wealth in the future and to sustain human life in general—was recognized and analyzed by parts of the scientific community decades ago. The necessity to achieve an economic, effective use of natural resources—in order to continue to generate wealth in the future and to sustain human life in general—was recognized and analyzed by parts of the scientific community decades ago Beyond this analysis, normative goals and implementation concepts to enhance resource efficiency were drawn up based on a certain target value. Enormous efforts must be made to create such an “eight-ton society”— on the part of business, which would have to make products and services along the entire value-chain considerably more efficient, consistent and adequate when it comes to resources, and on the part of the State, which would have to create economic policy framework conditions that would be conducive to more sustainable production and consumption and that, in addition, would have to provide infrastructures resulting in the consumption of considerably fewer resources [13,14,15,16,17]

Objectives

Results

Conclusion