If We Could Rent iPhones, Would That Help Save the Planet?
Apple is working on a subscription service, and a German rental company just raised more than $330 million. Here's how such efforts might lead to devices that last longer.
Why not rent?
Photographer: Feline Lim/Getty Images
In 2015, German entrepreneur Michael Cassau was in need of some gadgets for an apartment he was planning to occupy for a few months. Buying seemed wasteful, considering the cost of new devices and the environmental impact associated with manufacturing new ones.
But renting, an obvious option, simply wasn't available. So Cassau founded Grover Group GMBh, a gadget rental company based in Berlin. Seven years later, it's renting out 500,000 gadgets, mostly around Europe, and it just raised $330 million for a $1 billion valuation.