Geoff's blog

Less waste in consumption

Geoff Mulgan - 03.04.2012

Nesta hosted a great event last month on Collaborative Consumption, kicked off by the marvellous Rachel Botsman.

She combined the big picture - on a radically new way of organising the economy -  with detailed analysis of the various business models used by platforms like AirBNB, taskrabbit, Techshop, Buzzcar and Getable.

The definitions of Collaborative Consumption are a bit fuzzy around the edges - with some being little more than better ways of organising commercial renting.  But the movement as a whole is a reminder that although capitalism is great at driving efficiency in production it's been hopeless at driving efficiency in consumption. 

Too often, lean manufacturing at one end of the process feeds into phenomenal levels of waste at the other end - like the houses of the very wealthy that are used for only a few days a year, or  drills used on average for only 11-20 minutes in their whole life. 

I was reminded of a similar event I took part in almost exactly 15 years ago, then launching the idea of guaranteed electronic markets which had been developed by Nick Wingham Rowan.  The themes are all there; web-based collaborative consumption, clever devices to get over problems of trust etc. 

But in retrospect guaranteed electronic markets were conceived too much as a new infrastructure rather than an array of different services that could be layered over existing broadband and mobile infrastructures.  

Like many big ideas this one has taken a long time to come to fruition, and it's still not clear whether it will become a five per cent economy or 25 per cent or 50 per cent.  But two signals struck me recently. One was Andrew Haldane, MD of the Bank of England, suggesting that peer-to-peer finance models could simply sweep away the inefficient retail banks before too long. Another was data from the US and UK showing that young people have much less attachment to owning a car than the previous generation. 

The great icon of the consumer society may have lost some of its glamour, and we may be returning to Aristotle's view that there is greater wealth to be had from use than from ownership.