Principle 13: Product Service Systems

Article PhotoWhile many things about living a sustainable lifestyle have changed since the early days of environmentalism, it’s been true all along that the best way to buy green is to buy nothing. Even with the current upsurge in “eco-friendly” consumer goods, the lightest impact we can have as consumers is to consume less, buy less, and use less. The obvious argument against the whole idea, of course, is that to live a comfortable life, we all need things, and this whole “buy nothing” attitude is just guilt-making and impossible. Yet when it comes down to it, in many cases what we really want is the service those things provide, not the things themselves. If we could have the resulting conveniences that all our possessions afford us without owning them ourselves, would our lives be as comfortable and easy? Service designers say yes. Service designers create product service systems, which are a way to facilitate access to everyday conveniences through organized sharing, while maintaining (or even elevating) our quality of life. The classic example of this, which we reference frequently, is car-sharing. The concept has been around for decades, but recently, it was hugely inconvenient and inefficient. Technology has revolutionized the… (more)

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Stuff at 2:29 PM)