What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption

“access is better than ownership.”

All the things we buy that then just sit there gathering dust are waste—a waste of money, a waste of time, and waste in the sense of pure garbage. As the author Clive Hamilton observes, “The difference between the stuff we buy and what we use is waste.”31 Trash and storage are just two different endgames of the same problem.

What are the characteristics of an ideal Collaborative Consumption product? One for Life One obvious key factor is longevity. Across

Services such as Zipcar, Bag Borrow and Steal, SolarCity, and DenimTherapy are not reinventing their industry’s product but reimagining the larger system within which their product operates.

The Web site for BIXI, the bicycle-sharing service in Montreal, announces “We are BIXI,” and this announcement is followed by a manifesto declaring what the members believe in: “Because we know that being part of the solution means knowing that great changes can arise from the smallest of actions done together. Because we’re thinking and behaving d

Members are given all the traditional benefits of joining a club: status, identity, shared interests, and ownership.

The swap market just for used children’s clothing (0 to 13 years) is estimated to be between $1 billion and

Airbnb charges hosts a standard 3 percent service fee and travelers an additional 6 to 12 percent depending on the reservation price. Aside

providers. Xerox (photocopiers to document services), Steelcase (office furniture to office furnishing systems), AT&T (phone products to communication packages), Pitney Bowes (postage products to mail management systems), and IBM (hardware and software goods to business solutions) all have made the core purpose of their business to sell the fun