Circular Economy

Trend Briefing:
Sustainability Implications of the Sharing Economy

When Airbnb and Uber burst on the scene a few years ago the business world was abuzz with the potential for a new “sharing economy.”Advocates explained how these services would provide people with new ways of making money by utilizing their homes and vehicles to their full potential, while offering a service that could save energy, reduce waste and bring communities together by sharing their resources and time.

By Matthew Yeomans | Published 9 years ago | About a 3 minute read

When Airbnb and Uber burst on the scene a few years ago the business world was abuzz with the potential for a new “sharing economy.”

Advocates explained how these services would provide people with new ways of making money by utilizing their homes and vehicles to their full potential, while offering a service that could save energy, reduce waste and bring communities together by sharing their resources and time.

Today more than 100 companies are considered part of this industry built on digitally enabled collaboration. They range from the well-known urban transportation and accommodation services to startup communities specializing in tools and toy sharing. Even big corporates including Marriott, Walgreens and Avis have got into the sharing economy game.

Matthew Yeomans,
keynote speaker
at
SB '15 San DiegoYet as the sector has developed, the sustainability utopia of the sharing economy has come into question. Both Airbnb and Uber have had to counter claims that their services don’t protect the wellbeing of the sharers who use their platforms. Uber, in particular, has been accused of all manner of unsporting business practices while, on an environmental level, there are serious questions for all the transportation companies in this sector about whether their services are actually reducing the number of cars on the road or just adding to the congestion by encouraging more people to drive for a living.

Then there is the larger issue of whether companies that have few employees but depend on a great deal of freelance labor can really be sustainable for society.

Despite these concerns, it’s clear that the sharing economy could help business and society deliver on ambitious sustainability goals.

In Sustainly’s new Trend Briefing, we consider 10 interesting sharing economy companies and the services they provide that have sustainability potential. In the transport sector, we look at Lyft’s “Line” service, which operates like an inner-city version of BlaBlaCar, where riders are picked up along routes pre-determined by the driver. In the travel and tourism sector we salivate with EatWith, a culinary service that matches travellers looking for good food and local culture with trained chefs and talented home cooks in cities around the world. In consumer goods, we admire the sustainable building blocks behind a company like Pley, which, through a membership scheme, offers sharing of Lego sets for families across the US. And we look at how the down-to-earth sharing economy is getting a fashion makeover, courtesy of the tie and menswear accessory company, Fresh Neck.

As the sharing economy develops it will find even more creative ways to make the best use of underutilized hardware while offering greater opportunities for freelance and contract work. Yet as this sector scales so the sustainability challenges – environmental and social – for the companies involved will increase. The truly innovative ones will find a way to maximize their lean growth while still demonstrating responsible corporate citizenship. In this way, they will show that the sharing economy can also be caring.

You can read more about the sharing economy’s impact on sustainability at Sustainly.

Matthew Yeomans

Founder
Sustainly

Matthew Yeomans is the founder of Sustainly, a media business providing companies and agencies the information they need to deliver authentic and creative sustainability content. He is the author of the annual Social Media Sustainability Index.

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