More and more often we need certain goods, which we will use for a very short time. These goods cost a lot and take a lot of space. Even if we can afford them, we often wonder where to put them and what to do with them, after we had used them.

Due to the above we think more and more often about borrowing things from our friends or family or just hiring them?

It turns out that the changing world leads to a new kind of needs – not to have things, but to have the opportunity to use them for a certain period and for an affordable praise. This leads to a new kind of economy – sharing economy, and of course – to new business models, the circular economy models.

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What is the Sharing Economy?

The sharing economy is becoming ever larger and more diverse, involving new and new spheres of public life. And even some people know what is the definition for sharing economy, it is need to be explain what is its essence.

The sharing economy is a new kind of phenomenon, which is much more different from the traditional linear economy, where we have resource–product–consumer–waste. The sharing economy is tightly linked with digital technologies and the opportunities they offer. Thanks to the technologies, there is a new business models, based on cooperation and exchange. This allows people to use services, assets, resources without transferring the ownership rights. In other words – the sharing economy gives the opportunity to use goods, without spending a lot of money on them.

In practice, we all use the sharing economy in one way or another. The more effectively we use the resources, the more efficiency is for the people and of course for the environment. The biggest benefit of the sharing economy is for customer, the individual who wants to satisfy a particular need for a certain period of time.

If you are wondering if your business is part of the sharing economy, you might check that by respond to these three questions:

– your business purpose is to have maximum recovery of goods and services through sharing.

– your business is not leading to ownership of goods, but offers joint use; – your business works via platforms/models, which provides contacts between a lot of entities – providing goods or services, from one side and consumers, from the other;

What are the benefits of the sharing economy?

The sharing economy has some negative features, mostly refer to the regulation and lack of adequate legislation in the sector. In this text we will explain what are the benefits for the consumers and how this kind of economy makes life easier for the ordinary people.

Here are some of the benefits that we discovered:

• First, we should mention that thanks to the sharing economy we save money. If we take a look at the goods that can be hired, we will understand that the more expensive are the goods, the lower the percentage of market value they can be hired is. Or in other words, if the value of the car is about 30 000 EUR, we can rent it for 30 EUR, or even for 5 EUR per day. But if we need to rent a baby stroller, we can hire it for 5 BGN per day, having in mind that the value of the stroller is about 200 BGN. In bought cases it will be cheaper to rent instead to buy, if we need the goods for a short period of time.
• In addition, the sharing economy helps us not only to save money, but to save space too, without storing useless things. Collecting household goods for our children and grandchildren is a typical regional attitude, but this is out of fashion for a very long time. And even more. The new generations use certain goods only when they need them, without storing goods just in case. In this regard, more and more often the young people are tended to hire goods that they need, than to buy them. This means that they value the space more than the goods.
• Often, we owned an object, but we do not want or we can not transport it to another place, where we will need it for a while. And here comes the possibility to rent the same object, but where we are at that moment. Just imagine the following situation – a young family, living abroad, come back in Bulgaria, for a month. The family do not want to transport the baby stroller. The family rent a stroller, using internet platform, and the stroller wait them on the address they will live for a month.
• It turns out that the sharing economy is useful not only from material point of view. Thanks to this kind of economy, people create social connections. The shared workspaces and the shared traveling are typical examples.

We can generalize that the sharing economy is the opposite of culture of consuming and that it helps people not to store useless property, that in fact leads to loss of valuable resources. The sharing economy has social and ecological measuring, it creates solidarity between the citizens, revives the local economy, create jobs, makes the usage more rational, consolidates the use of some goods. This ensures a more responsible and sustainable consumption

The place of the sharing economy in EU

According to the European Commission, the European politics for sharing economy should become part of the politics of each of the European countries. The market value of the companies, which deal with this constantly increases. The sharing economy is based on the perfect match between supply and demand. And contrary to the fears of some business and some people, the sharing economy does not lead to job cuts, just the opposite –leads to new jobs and to the transforming of some traditional professions. And if no clear standards have been imposed on the sharing economy yet, more and more business models are moving towards it. Several sectors stand up, in which is the most intensive work for its more active application in European countries – mobility (transport), living spaces (renting for the purpose of tourism or longer-term residence), food supply (“from farm to fork” is an opportunity for people to eat personalized and healthy), opening the finances (developing crowdfunding), education (providing free trainings), solidarity economy (cooperation, mutual aid, volunteering in a community, which can be expressed as free cooking, cleaning, childcare, care for the elderly and etc.).

What types of sharing economy can be used in Bulgaria?

Except the familiar benefits of the sharing economy, like rent a car, carpooling, rent an apartment, house or etc., there are a lot other objects that can be hired in Bulgaria. We will take a look at some interesting direction in this type of economy.

Household machines

Have you ever been doing some home improvement and need a drill only for two holes, but didn’t know where to get one? Now you can solve this problem by visiting some of the house and garden hypermarkets, where you can rent cracker, perforator, drill, vacuum cleaner, water jet, lawnmower, trimmer, welding machine and even more.

Laptops and tablets

Almost everyone has a personal laptop or tablet, today. However, there are cases, when you need a certain laptop model or when you do not feel like you want to carry yours, or your laptop should be fixed, or you use it for something else. Or you may need more units for a seminar or training. Now you have the opportunity to rent such kind of technique for an hour, for some days or even for a week. There are internet platforms, which offer laptops and tablets for rent. And thanks to these platforms you can have a computer room with workplaces across the whole country. Or you may just do your work.

Baby products

There is no doubt that the baby accessories are one of the goods that most quickly go out of use. Apart the short usage term, not each baby product is suitable for every child. The prices of the baby products are high and if you buy everything you think your baby will need, it may turn out that you spent a lot of money for things, which you will never use in future.

To understand what your baby will like, you just can hire some products. We should mention that there is an internet platform especially for slings and ergonomic baby carriers. This is a great opportunity to see if your baby will be fine in such kind of carriers.

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Toys

More and more often we buy toys to our children, but they play for a while and just left them. That is how we get a lot of them, do not knowing what to do and where to store them. The sharing economy offers a decision of that problem, giving us the opportunity not to buy, but to rent. There are internet platforms in Bulgaria, which give us the chance to rent different toys for children at all ages and not to store them at home. Thus, when the children get fed up with a certain toy and forget it, we can easily replace it with another, again rental.

Formal and Evening Dressings

Almost everyone claims that “there is nothing to wear” and at the same time the wardrobe is full with hidden and well forgotten “treasures”. The sharing economy has the decision to this problem too – formal clothing and evening dressings for rent. This enables everyone to be irresistible at important events and at the same time not to spend a lot of money, as well as providing more space in the wardrobe.

The clothes may be choose using the catalogue, upload in the site. The delivery is made via courier, as well as the returning. There is one more asset – you do not need to clean the dressings. The company will do it instead of you.

Except all these specialized sites, there are a lot of others, which just make the connection between the people who want to hire and those who have goods for rent. Using these sites, you can rent almost everything – bikes, tents and camping gear, jewellery, tables and chairs and etc.

The sharing economy enables a more efficient use of the resources we have and a better and more favorable future for us, as the main inhabitants of the Earth. The good news is that the new generations are those who use the sharing economy most efficiently. More and more people realized that it is not important to own something, that the property is not an asset and leads to expenses. Most important is to have access to goods that you need to use. The sharing economy is very important for protecting the environment and reducing climate change by limiting consumer behavior and reducing the waste. The sharing economy has social effect, as generator of social contacts and solidarity.