ACCESS Hubs is a new EU-funded project that aims to expand and improve rental and sharing services across Europe. The project supports cities, social enterprises, and small businesses to develop access-based services, and makes it easier for people to find them through new digital platforms that aggregate all local rental and sharing options in one place.
While many European cities have advanced circular economy strategies, most efforts still focus on end-of-life solutions, such as recycling discarded goods. Meanwhile, citizens continue to purchase large volumes of goods that are rarely used. For instance, the average drill is only used for 10 minutes in its lifetime. ACCESS Hubs tackles this issue by helping public authorities and local economic operators to build local “access ecosystems” that increase the use of existing goods, reduce waste, and make access services more convenient and attractive for citizens.
The project is funded by Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) and supports 12 partners across 6 countries make renting and sharing a visible, well-organised and scalable alternative to buying and owning goods. This includes the municipalities of Amsterdam (NL), The Hague (NL), Ghent (BE), Dortmund (DE), Béthune (FR), and Valenciennes (FR), alongside social enterprises, innovators and circular economy experts from We Right-click, The Rediscovery Centre, Made., IESEG School of Management, and the University of Luxembourg. It is coordinated by the second-hand and repair store, Kringwinkel Antwerpen.
“ACCESS Hubs is about making access-based consumption fit seamlessly into daily life — for citizens, for cities, and for local businesses. By making access services more visible and easier to use, we can reduce unnecessary purchases, cut waste, and make circular choices easier and more affordable.” – Laura Lambrecht, Project Lead Circular Economy, Kringwinkel Antwerpen (Lead Partner)
Making access services easier to find and easier to use
A central challenge today is that access options remain too few and too dispersed across cities, making them difficult to see, find and use. ACCESS Hubs aims to tackle this issue by testing seven local access platforms (e.g. apps, webapps) across its partner cities and countries. These platforms will act as aggregators of nearby access services, comparable to “Google Maps for consumer goods”, allowing citizens to quickly compare services based on practical criteria such as price, quality, opening hours, and distance. By grouping information in one place, access platforms are designed to increase demand for access services and lower the effort required for citizens to choose sharing, renting or leasing over purchasing new products.
Supporting SMEs to introduce rental, leasing and Product-as-a-Service models
To expand the supply of access services, ACCESS Hubs will also deliver an accelerator programme for local SMEs. Municipalities and The Rediscovery Centre will select participating businesses, such as kitchen retailers, sports shops, and household appliance stores, and support them through targeted training to implement rental, leasing or subscription business models alongside traditional sales models. Selected SMEs will also receive financial incentives to test and launch these new business models in practice.
By the end of the project, ACCESS Hubs aims to initiate at least 30+ new access services across the NWE region.
“This project is a practical step-change: it supports both the public and private sides of the access economy at the same time. That combination is essential if we want access services to become mainstream and sustainable beyond the lifetime of the project.” – Sami Angsthelm, Team Lead Circular & Sharing Economy at Bax
Measuring impact and supporting municipalities to ensure long-term success of new access services
To help fulfil the wider aim of making renting and sharing as easy as buying, ACCESS Hubs will develop a dedicated impact assessment methodology to measure local outcomes of the access economy, including indicators such as avoided purchases and other environmental and socio-economic effects. In parallel, the project will analyse barriers and behavioural levers that influence citizen adoption, and clarify the role of municipalities in supporting local access ecosystems, including governance approaches that can keep services running long after project funding ends.
A transnational approach is essential to co-develop a shared vision and framework, align methods for measuring impact, and provide public authorities with a practical methodology to support local economic operators in their regions. With this approach, ACCESS Hubs aims to be the first EU project to systematically support both public authorities and businesses in making access-based consumption work at scale.
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. Interested in learning more? We’d love to hear from you.