Kids love to play – that’s an essential part of growing up,
and teaches them valuable social skills. And what is the one trait that every
parent reinforces with their child when a fellow toddler wanders by and walks
off with their favorite toy?
“Can we S-H-A-R-E?”
That’s right – the concept of sharing is hammered into the
heads of our sons and daughters right from the time they start to interact with
other human beings their own size. And this is one characteristic that
transcends cultures – whether you are American, Swedish, Chinese, Kenyan or
Argentinian, I can bet your parents made you “play nice” with your neighbors.
That meant pooling your toys together rather than sitting in your respective
corners, each with the same doll or car or whatever else the toy industry was selling
at the time.
So how is it that all those kids grow up and promptly forget
the meaning of that all important word and get indoctrinated into the culture
of conspicuous consumption? Blame that on the advertising industry that exhorts
us daily to “go shopping”, an activity that, if analyzed rationally, would make
absolutely no sense. This is not a task done to satisfy a desire to acquire a
certain object of value, but rather an endeavor unto itself – a form of
exercise in some places where our otherwise sedentary lives make us run the
risk of obesity and diabetes. Indeed, more than “sharing”, one of the most
powerful cultural norms of our time is the quest to possess material wealth –
this gets passed on from one generation to the next with surprising ease.
The advent of the sharing/collaborative/on-demand economy
promises to revolutionize the way in which people consume goods and services –
unlocking the value of assets that would otherwise remain unused, such as cars
(Uber, Lyft) and beds (Airbnb). It could also shift us off the path of
continuous production and consumption, which dominates most market driven
economies, by placing demand in front of supply – goods would be manufactured
only when needed. And, when coupled with establishing circular flows, it could
dramatically lower raw material (especially non-renewable) needs for everything
that we use in our daily lives.
If we truly want adults to embrace this new way of
transacting commerce, we need to start with when they are kids – in the same manner
that every company on the planet tries to inculcate brand loyalty before the
age of 5. And childhood is a great time to understand that the true value comes
not from owning a toy but in playing with it – because most kids outgrow a toy
in less time than it takes to open the package. They all want what the other
kid has – a precursor to the “grass is greener on the other side of the fence”
that most of us experience later in life. How many times can you actually make
the same Lego® set over and over again?
A vibrant sharing economy for children’s toys will have a
massive environmental benefit – because most toys nowadays are made from
non-renewable plastics. And while a few noble souls donate toys to the needy,
that merely extends its life by a few months – the product is eventually going
to end up in a landfill.
To be clear, a sharing economy for toys is not the same as a
toy swap (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/perfi/tips/2010-12-18-toys-swap_N.htm)
or toy exchange https://the-toy-exchange.pswebstore.com),
which one would regard as a secondary market for toys that have been purchased
from the manufacturer/retailer (the primary market) – it is a complete
elimination of the sale of toys, to be replaced by a leasing concept or “pay
per use”. Let’s take the case of one of the most popular children’s toys,
Lego®. According to information on the internet, there are over 400m Lego
bricks on the planet, and it would be safe to assume that less than 10% of them
are being actively used. While some enthusiasts like to make a Lego toy and
keep it in a glass case, most sets are rendered useless due to the loss of a
few pieces that get stuck within sofa crevices or just accidentally swept up in
the trash.
There are a number of Lego “rental services” (pley.com,
netbrickz.com, buildurbricks) but these function on a ”take or pay” arrangement
– the user subscribes for the right to get a certain number of Lego sets in a
given time period, much like Netflix for films. Given that the incremental cost
of a Lego brick is virtually zero, paying $15 per month or more for a
subscription service makes no sense. Furthermore, these companies are all
intermediaries to the actual manufacturer who is still selling sets through
their stores. So it is unlikely that there is any reduction in the number of
Lego sets being made, just a slight shift in the number of people who are
actually buying them.
All this can change with a simple adjustment – Lego should
get out of the business of selling their bricks and instead get into the
business of charging for enjoyment. Lego stores would become Lego play centers
where children can come for a few hours and play with the bricks – no one takes
anything home and there is never any disposal issue once you get bored of
playing with the bricks. This concept will work equally well in a small town,
where parents can walk their kids over to the play center, or in a large mall,
where parents can leave their kids to play with some supervision (stores like
Ikea have play areas). In both cases, the payment is made for the experience of
playing with the toy, not the ownership of the toy. As I’ve written above, the cost
of making a Lego set if perhaps a few dollars in raw material, processing and
shipping costs, while they sell for anywhere from 20-200$ - or higher.
In the short run, moving away from the direct sales model
will hurt Lego’s profits –but from a sustainability point of view, it will
reduce the amount of plastic waste being sent to landfill by parents who don’t
know what to do with the set once the child gets bored. Also, Lego can continue
to make new sets from old ones that are no longer interesting/relevant – so a
set made in the 1990s may be recast into one for the 2020s. The idea of
grandparents, parents and children all playing with Lego then becomes a reality
– your child is literally playing with the the same set that their grandparents
had!
The shift away from toy ownership represents a huge step for
later in life when children grow up and start to want other possessions like
clothes, shoes etc. While the concept of sharing differs in each of those
cases, the lack of private ownership (for life) is the main concept. The key is
that corporations who expect to see a drop in their revenues relative to the
direct sales model should not ramp up their production to cover for that
shortfall. The market will need to recognize that a company has made a structural
change in their business model and that it is good for the environment overall.
Companies can truly claim to have internalized the externalities in that case –
taking credit for helping people not throw valuable materials into a landfill.
What are the lifestyle changes that people will need to
accept if this shift happens? For starters, the convenience of having your own
toys goes away – a child may go to the Lego play center and find it is full and
not get the set of their choice. But if the child has been used to that model
from the very start, they have nothing to benchmark against – it does not
appear to be an aberration but the norm (this is the same for societies that
emphasize shared ownership). Indeed, moving away from owning products to utilizing
them to fulfill a need (in this case entertainment) will be most challenging
for those people who have grown up with the concept of ownership. For the
children of the future, visiting a play center to socialize with other kids
will be as normal as going to a library to read a book or for storytelling.
