Practical Sustainability Strategies, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 6Servicizing and the Sharing Economy

Over the past generation, the economies of the United States and other wealthy industrialized states have undergone significant structural changes. Services have attained new prominence, and the relative contribution of traditional manufacturing to these economies has diminished. These changes have created enormous opportunities for entrepreneurs and new national wealth on the one hand—and huge social costs attendant to the decline of traditional industries and challenges for public policy on the other.

Because the human impact on the environment is intimately linked to economic activity, these changes present both a challenge and an opportunity for environmental policy. The structural changes producing a service and information-led economy is often presented in environmental terms as gradually divorcing economic growth from material and energy throughput and environmental burden. The idea of a functional economy—in which the focus of consumption is not goods per se, but the services which those goods deliver—has been associated with the idea of eco-efficiency. In a functional economy, commercial and domestic consumers buy cleaning services instead of washing machines, document services rather than photocopiers, and mobility services rather than cars.

Systematic analysis of the environmental implications of a service and information-led economy has only recently begun. It is clear that the simplest and most optimistic view—a service ...