Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous
It may be better for the environment to not own stuff, but instead use services.For example, take a fridge. If I buy a fridge, the company I buy it from has an incentive to make it break in N years, so they can sell me a new one, i.e. "planned obsolescence".However, if I subscribe to a service to keep my food and beverages at a certain temperature, then the company has the incentive to make the fridge last as long as possible.EDIT: Besides eliminating planned obsolescence, there are more advantages:- Increased market transparency. The market is more transparent if I know exactly what a service costs me per month, as opposed to buying a product and not knowing when it will fail. A more transparent market leads to better competition.- Another advantage is that the whole life-cycle of the product, including recycling it, becomes a natural responsibility of the company.