A round up of the key highlights from across the Access Economy Alliance and the wider sharing ecosystem this year.
Our mission at the Access Economy Alliance is simple: to advance access over ownership by making borrowing and sharing everyday goods as easy as buying. The journey towards this mission can sometimes still feel like an uphill struggle. Forbes recently reported that Black Friday sales reached an all-time high in 2025, highlighting how deeply embedded buying still is in everyday consumption.
However, the work being done across our network of municipalities, businesses, non-profits and researchers across Europe tells a different story — one where sharing services are becoming more accessible, more popular and more embedded in public policy and business frameworks.
Here are just some of the ways that the sharing revolution advanced across Europe and beyond in 2025.
More locations, more users, more global reach
Sharing services expanded to more locations, more users and more countries this year – helping to boost both the accessibility and visibility of sharing services where people can go to borrow everyday items, from household tools to sports equipment.
Highlights included:
- Sharing library provider Library of Things and sharing station provider Les Biens en Commun launching city-wide networks in London and Lyon, with 17 and 22 sharing sites now operating across the respective cities. In Lyon, residents can now access a sharing station within 15 minutes of their home, while in London’s Southwark district, citizens can borrow items from a sharing library within a 2.5 km radius.
- Poppins, the peer-to-peer sharing app, surging to number one in the French App Store, gaining 100,000 new users in one night following an appearance on French TV Channel, M6 – demonstrating just how strong the public appetite for item sharing is.
- Sport sharing station providers BoxUp and Equip Sport both expanded to North America. Equip Sport, for example, launched 30 stations where people can go to borrow sports equipment in Surrey, British Columbia, with many more planned for the continent.
Increased media attention
Media appetite for sharing services continued to be strong this year, with highlights including:
- Features in the New York Times, BBC, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and on French national television.
- Equip Sport and Circular Library Network winning awards at the 2025 London Sport Awards and the Change 100 sustainability startup awards.
- Poppins, HomeExchange, Getaround, BlaBlaCar, Lokki, Les Biens en Commun and others teaming up to redefine what it means to be ‘rich’ in the sharing era with the nouveaux riches campaign.
Greater recognition of sharing services as a crucial public policy and business innovation
In recognition of the central role that the sharing and access economy can play in supporting Europe’s circular economy goals and in helping businesses, municipalities and other organisations expand their service offerings, the following milestones were reached:
- The first EU-funded sharing stations were launched in Sweden and Belgium by the City of Sint-Niklaas, Familjebostäder and Kringwinkel as part of the Digital Kiosks project.
- The first-ever national roundtable took place dedicated to building a connected ecosystem of sharing infrastructure and solutions across the Netherlands.
- The Welsh national library policy officially recognised libraries of things as a concept to advance more sustainable and connected communities.
- The Deputy Mayor of Paris officially acknowledged the power of sport sharing stations to help the city reach its goal to make sport a right accessible to everyone.
- New business partnerships were forged to integrate sharing services into existing frameworks, including with the supermarket chain Casino, which now hosts Les Biens en Commun sharing stations, and EV charging station provider IONITY, which launched sport sharing stations at charging points this year.
Taken together, these developments show that the shift from ownership to access is no longer a niche experiment, but a growing and credible alternative to buy-and-dispose consumption. While buying still dominates many aspects of everyday life, 2025 demonstrated that the appetite for sharing services is real, and that the infrastructure needed to meet this demand is growing, professionalising, and being institutionalised at an increasing pace.
We look forward to building on this momentum in the year ahead, working with our members and partners to help sharing and borrowing services go mainstream across Europe and beyond.
The Access Economy Alliance is Europe’s first network of public authorities, businesses and researchers that pools together resources, collaborations and knowledge to deliver a circular economy through access-based services.