Introduction

The sharing economy is integrating into our daily lives, facilitating resource-efficient and cohesive societies in the NSR. In 2023, over a million of shared vehicles were deployed in cities, thanks to digital innovation and collaboration between the public and private sector. Today, a new sector is taking-up: the sharing economy of goods.

Challenge

Billions of underused consumer goods, such as leisure equipment, tools, or home appliances, remain underused and are thrown away in EU households, leading to financial waste, resource depletion, and a growing waste crisis. The NSR is an area where consumption has increased the most in the last decade due to its socio-economic benefits. Small peer-to-peer sharing initiatives failed to scale in the NSR due to a lack of successful business models and user experience.

Market innovation

New infrastructure (through connected locker) is emerging in the NSR to enable efficient sharing of goods. SMEs like Tulu and Piffl are deploying and operating sharing stations in various areas, allowing citizens to access goods for short periods in public spaces, buildings, shops. This growing sector has raised over €35M in 2023 to scale, moving from hundreds to thousands of deployments in the NSR in the coming years.

Objective

Digital Kiosks aims to create the right environment for the sustainable deployment of sharing stations in the NSR and support SMEs as key innovators in this process.

Transnational benefit

The project will build upon different sharing cultures and public-private partnership approaches, through 22 pilots, to create a European evidence-based innovation framework, allowing more accurate and faster decision-making to set up sharing station in the NSR.

Why is it new

The sharing station is the first scalable concept for the uptake of the sharing economy of goods, with a high social acceptance potential. Digital Kiosks is the first EU project to bring together sharing station providers, municipalities, academia and others.