The Role of Product Service Systems in a Sustainable Society

Our society is using more resources than the planet can sustainably supply. In many situations, the major part of these resources ends up as wastes or rejects rather than in the products we use. The energy efficiency of many processes we rely on in our domestic and industrial life is well below 50 percent. Recent studies indicate that a sustainable society in the future should use only about 10 percent of the resources that industrialised societies are using today (per capita). A radical change is needed to move from the prevailing economic system of manufacturing goods and inducing customers to buy them towards one based on dematerialised consumption patterns. Product service systems are one of the elements in such a future.