One major issue attached to the transition towards a sustainable society is that of 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. 

In relation to this, 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) funded by the EU Erasmus+. LeNSin, started in 2015, is the follow up of other two EU funded projects aiming at the promotion of a new generation of designers (and educators) capable to effectively contribute to the transition towards a sustainable society for all, aiming at the diffusion of design for sustainability worldwide with a learning-by–sharing and open and copy left ethos. 

The Hypothesises have been explored, and articulated within the project: 5 seminars were prepared in partner institutions, which was resulted in developing the new knowledge-base and know-how delivered to 10 pilot courses. Finally, all the resources were uploaded on the open-learning e-platform, where they could be downloaded free of charge, open and copy left, became the first open learning e-package on S.PSS applied to DE design. 

Authors: Carlo Vezzoli,  Cenk Basbolat