The Digital Kiosks Resource Hub Introduction: The Why Sharing Station Providers Knowledge area Media
<aside> 💡 This page will give you an introduction to the basics of the sharing economy and why it is important to work in this field.
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Picture waking up tomorrow and needing a drill to fix some furniture, or a volleyball set for an afternoon in the park with friends. If you didn’t already own them, you would usually go out and buy these items. Once you were done, those items would sit unused in your cupboard for months and years on end, gathering dust.
Now, imagine a world where sharing is as convenient as owning, where liveability meets sustainability, and where the collective commitment of public authorities, citizens, universities, and start-ups shape the very fabric of the sharing economy for consumer goods. To bring this vision to life, we must develop the physical, digital, and social infrastructure that enables more sharing and accessing in our cities.
Let’s bring the sharing economy to its full potential! The sharing economy has the power to change the consumption paradigm. Instead of the vicious cycle of buying low-quality goods that end up in closets and are quickly discarded, we can create a sustainable consumption cycle. This cycle emphasises sharing or renting durable products that are easily accessible to everyone through various access services and can be locally repaired and reused.
The business-as-usual consumption model is outdated in the current environmental, social and economic context. It is unsustainable in the face of the increasing scarcity of primary resources, growing socio-economic inequalities, declining social cohesion, among other factors.