HEAD 2 HEAD

How many things do you own? Not just the big ticket items like your car or your house, but every single thing. Your computer, mobile phone, the clothes on your back and in your cupboard, kitchen appliances, toys for the kids, a television or two, books, DVD’s…the list is endless! Mankind’s appetite for owning “stuff” is seemingly insatiable and we are bombarded at every turn by advertising encouraging us to add to our personal collections. But is it really necessary for us to own all these things? In short, no, it isn’t. It may not even be necessary to own anything at all.

Let’s think about cars for a second. I got my first car after I turned 18 and passed my driver’s test. It was a silver VW Polo and from the minute I first took the wheel I was in love. A love that lasted until the first time it broke down and I started to grasp what owning a car really meant. Six years have passed since then and having changed numerous flat tyres, paid for annual services, insurance, parking and petrol, I can’t really remember why I wanted a car in the first place! Nevermind the fact that I only ever drive it for a few hours a week. What I really want is access to a car whenever I need one, but without all of the hassles of ownership. Thankfully, I can now turn to Zipcar.

Part of the sharing economy, Zipcar lets you use one of their fleet of vehicles whenever you need it. You simply pay for the time you have the car, petrol insurance and maintenance included! Once you are done with the vehicle you simply return it to its parking spot for the next person to use. The sharing economy is giving people access to a multitude of things they would otherwise have to own. You can rent short-term office space or meeting rooms through Liquidspace and your children can build Lego sets provided by a company called Pley, returning the set when they’re ready for a new one. Whatever it is you are looking for, somebody out there is likely to share it with you.

The sharing economy is only part of the picture though. Product-service-systems, where you pay for the service rather than the product, are another mechanism for avoiding ownership. An example of this is a company called Bundles, which allows you to wash your clothes at home without having to own a washing machine. For a monthly fee, based on how often you do your laundry, they will provide you with the latest machine, taking care of electricity and maintenance costs. Similar services can be applied to a range of other appliances and products, such as power tools and electronics.

The power of the sharing economy and the rise of product-service-systems are dealing a hard knock to the necessity of ownership. Add to the mix digital services such as Netflix and Spotify that give users access to digital content without ever owning it and I’d say it’s on its last legs. Ownership may not be dead just yet, but it’s certainly dying.

AGREE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dale Walker originates from South Africa where he received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. He recently completed his master’s degree at Cranfield University in the UK. As a Schmidt-MacArthur Fellow Dale’s research focused on creating a future vision for the fast-moving consumer goods industry in a circular economy.

“Ownership is dead.”

For this ‘Head 2 Head’ series, we approached a number of people from a variety of backgrounds to write an opinion piece around a contentious statement, asking them to take either an ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ stance. In some cases the authors have been deliberately provocative, and their goal is to contribute to a conversation around some chosen themes.

The views expressed here are the authors’ alone.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In Summer 2013 Ellie Banwell quit her 10 year biochemistry research career and moved to London to retrain as a designer.

DISAGREE

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION FESTIVAL 2014 ~ HEAD 2 HEAD

“Ownership is dead”

The circular economy can be thought of as a set of concentric loops. The inner, tighter, circles take advantage of extended product life and reusable components to reduce the short-term energy required to achieve circularity while the outer loops require complete disassembly to fundamental building blocks to recover valuable resources. The idea that ownership is dead is based upon the assumption that the inner loops are the more desirable and that leasing models are the best way to facilitate them. It has even been suggested that this might signal the end of hated designed obsolescence. Here I will argue that the first assumption is mistaken and that, not only is there considerable value in the outer loops of the circular economy, but that designed obsolescence may even be a useful tool that we should consider embracing.

Our global ecosystem is the ultimate closed loop and it is an important source of inspiration as we transition to a circular economy. Biological networks are unimaginably complex (Fig. 1). The entire Earth is one circular system, but it comprises layer upon layer of interacting networks, all of which are themselves circular. Yet, reuse analogous to the inner loops of the butterfly diagram (Fig. 2) is strikingly rare in the natural world: maximizing longevity turns out to be a highly unusual strategy and we digest our food into comparatively small molecular building blocks before reassembling them, despite the tremendous overlap between biological structures across all domains of life. Earth’s oldest known living organisms are the Siberian Actinobacteria, which are estimated to have been alive for 400,000 – 600,000 years. These and many other super long-lived organisms prove that such longevity is biologically possible so if it is rare, there must be evolutionary benefits to aging and death (Fig. 3). In a constantly changing environment, short generation times enable rapid evolutionary responses and, indeed, the most successful adapters on the planet – bacteria – have generation times of just a few minutes.

As we transition to the circular economy, it is important to keep in mind the value of multiple approaches to problems. There will be times when we want to extend the life of a product and to remanufacture the same item rather than recycle the components—the economic equivalent of Siberian Actinobacteria—and on those occasions, a leasing model is a valuable business strategy. However, the lesson from biology is that short generation times enable more rapid adaptation, something that those in the technology world know very well indeed. In a rapidly iterating product, there is no value in the reuse of obsolete parts. Instead, we must ensure these faster life cycles are circular in nature. Biology shows us that complex networks of specialists working together are the best way to achieve energy-efficient reverse nutrient flows. In the context of agile material flows and short-lived products, ownership is far from dead: it is the only way to ensure efficient transfer of resources between all the parties required for energy-efficient circularity.

Fig. 1 Biological systems are complex for a reason: complex systems are resilient, adaptable and energy efficient.

Fig. 3 Methuselah the Great Basin bristlecone pine is almost 5000 years old.

Fig. 2 Biological systems are complex for a reason: complex systems are resilient, adaptable and energy efficient.