Sytem Design for Sustainability for All. Sustainable Product-Service System (S.PSS) Design applied to Distributed Economies (DE)

One major issue attached to the transition towards a sustainable society is improving social equity and cohesion in low and middle-income contexts, while empowering locally- based enterprises and initiatives for sustainability, characterised by a democratisation of access to resources, goods and services. Two promising and interwoven offer models coupling environmental with economic and social sustainability are the Sustainable Product-Service System (S.PSS) and the Distributed Economies (DE). The coupling of these two models is a new promising Research Hypothesis of the LeNSin (the international Learning Network of networks on Sustainability) for contributing to the transition towards a sustainable society for all, aiming at the diffusion of design for sustainability worldwide with a learning-by–sharing, open and copy-left ethos. Within this framework, a new system design approach with method and tools have been developed, tested, and articulated. They are now part of the first open learning e-package on S.PSS applied to DE design.