Across Europe, cities are investing heavily in sustainability strategies. Recycling systems are improving, waste targets are tightening, and circular economy ambitions are growing.
Yet one fundamental problem remains largely untouched.
Most of the products we buy are still used only a handful of times before sitting idle in homes, garages, and storage spaces. Despite all the talk about circularity, our economic system continues to push ownership as the default. Citizens are expected to consume differently, but are rarely given practical alternatives.
Access Hubs was created to change that.
The project is a new EU-funded initiative focused on expanding and improving rental and sharing services across Europe. Instead of concentrating on what happens after products become waste, Access Hubs focuses on what happens before they are bought.
Its goal is simple. Make access to goods more convenient, visible, and attractive than ownership.
Funded by Interreg North-West Europe, Access Hubs brings together 12 partners across 6 countries. The consortium includes the cities of Amsterdam, The Hague, Ghent, Dortmund, Béthune, and Valenciennes, alongside social enterprises, innovators, and circular economy experts. The project is coordinated by Kringwinkel Antwerpen, a Belgian second-hand and repair organisation.
"We Right Click will play a central role in Access Hubs by leading citizen engagement, awareness-raising, and user research across the North-West Europe region. Our focus is on one critical question. How do we move access services from niche solutions to everyday choices?" says Cynthia Karaki.
To achieve this, We Right Click will support public authorities in designing and delivering local engagement and awareness campaigns linked to their access platforms. These campaigns will focus on increasing visibility, building trust, and lowering the perceived barriers that currently prevent citizens from using rental and sharing services.
In parallel, we will develop a practical engagement toolkit for partners. This will include hands-on tools, workshops, and behavioural nudging strategies designed to foster meaningful citizen participation and sustained use of access services.
User research is another key pillar of our contribution. We will create a replicable guide for citizen engagement activities, pilot a focus group within the project, and systematically document lessons learned. These insights will be shared across the consortium to enable wider adoption and consistent engagement approaches in all partner cities.
One of the main structural challenges Access Hubs addresses is fragmentation. While many rental and sharing services already exist, they are often scattered and difficult to find. To tackle this, the project will test seven local digital access platforms across partner cities. These platforms will aggregate nearby access services and allow citizens to compare options based on price, quality, distance, and opening hours.
The project will also deliver an accelerator programme for local small and medium-sized enterprises. Businesses such as kitchen retailers, sports shops, and household appliance stores will receive targeted training and financial incentives to experiment with rental, leasing, or subscription models alongside traditional sales.
By the end of the project, Access Hubs aims to help initiate at least 30 new access services across the region and to develop a dedicated impact assessment methodology. This will measure concrete outcomes such as avoided purchases and environmental effects.
For We Right Click, Access Hubs is not about telling citizens to consume less. It is about building systems that make different choices possible, practical, and normal.
The project officially started in January, with pilot activities rolling out across partner cities in the coming months.
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