The Limits of Reuse: Why shopping second hand won’t save us
Buying reused items seems like a straightforward way to prevent the environmental and social harms of our economy. It’s not so simple.
Shopping is an experience that is enjoyed by some and loathed by others. Whichever camp you fall in to, it’s likely that at some point you have thought about where the stuff you buy comes from. With a growing awareness of ecological crises, and the widespread knowledge that the goods we consume are produced by workers overseas for low pay in poor conditions, many of us will have experienced pangs of guilt when we shop.
Sometimes, the niggles in the back of our mind about the stuff we’re surrounded by can cascade into an avalanche of thoughts that trace the network of globalised, capitalist production and its effects; the trees that were felled, the land that was cleared, the ill health of the miners toiling in toxic environments, the smoke from the factories, the conditions in the sweatshops, the packaging that will pollute for thousands of years, the shitty wages of the person who stacked the shelf and the pointlessness of the advertising to make you want things you don’t need. Understandably, most of us don’t want to be connected to this web of harm.
Shop second hand and do no harm
There is no shortage of advice on how to consume ethically. One school of thought says that the only way to truly avoid unethical supply chains is to use items that already exist. This has led some people to pledge to never buy new items again and only buy second hand goods instead. At a surface level, the rationale is perfectly reasonable. If the production and consumption of virtually any commodity in our economy produces numerous social and environmental harms, then reducing demand for those products will reduce the number produced and the total harm. Purchasing a used item instead of a new one therefore seems like a logical way to meet our needs and achieve this at the same time. It seems logical to assume that no more materials need be extracted, no more labour is required and no additional waste is created.
This is indeed what many people do, and research indicates that ecological and anti-consumerist concerns are regularly mentioned by people as motivations for purchasing used items instead of new ones (often at the same time as other concerns such as saving money). But like most simple ‘fixes’ for complex problems, shopping second hand as a means of addressing systemic social and ecological concerns, is not without its limits. By understanding these, we can begin to see the gaps that more systemic actions can fill.
Consumerism in the second hand economy
The idealised view of a second hand economy is one of items circulating between people, changing from hand to hand every time one person’s waste meets another’s want. However, the evidence available is limited. That which we do have suggests the economy is not that effective at reducing new purchases overall. What at first appears to be a simple replacement of one transaction with another is much more complex, being governed by personal and social psychology, specific attributes of the products being bought and sold and the wider economic system.
We can begin to explore the questionable impact of shopping second hand at the individual level. Despite our best intentions, the ultimate effects of our actions don’t always align with our motivations. For example, one study suggested that trading on second hand platforms can actually induce additional indulgent consumption, which is attributed to the theory of self licensing. This is where a person gets a boost to their self-image as an ecologically minded person and later leans on this as an excuse to justify extra purchases. They might buy a used TV, but then use this as an excuse to treat themselves to a new laptop. This is made even more likely if someone makes substantial savings because of a second hand purchase.
Another project found that the availability of vast quantities of constantly updated items seen on eBay can actually drive even more rapid cycles of consumption in people who use the platform. The authors suggest that this happens because mass platforms for exchange encourage us to view our possessions as stock, which we can resell to fund future purchases. Not only does this encourage more consumptive attitudes, but it could also lead to a greater flow of money through the economy, resulting in higher levels of aggregate demand for goods overall. Not to mention that the proliferation of platforms like eBay requires an army of underpaid, round-the-clock delivery drivers to function at scale.
Rebound effects associated with personal actions cast a high degree of doubt over the ability of any single person to make a net reduction in demand for new products, with anything short of a total lifestyle overhaul.[1] However, even if a single person were to extricate themselves completely from the treadmill of consumption, there are bigger forces at play which would limit their ability to contribute to change on a grander scale.
The difficulty of displacing the market
Let’s imagine that there was a large segment of the population dedicated to avoiding anything new at all costs. Could they somehow trigger the switch from a linear, extractive economy to a circular one based on reuse? Although the research in this area is limited, studies on consumer behaviour and economic modelling have produced almost no evidence to suggest that there are realistic scenarios in which the second hand market can completely displace the sale of new products without regulatory input. One study that combined several methods proposed that under certain conditions, it would be possible to have a backfire effect on the purchase of smartphones, where reuse could encourage higher total production. Some of the reasons that the second hand economy won’t fully displace the new economy are intuitive. For example, if the price of used and new goods are comparable, then it is likely that people will choose to buy the new item. Companies are also not passive actors, and will act to lower their prices if they see that they are losing market share, often by externalising the costs to people and the planet. In short, mass, coordinated consumer action could have some impact on total production, but it will probably be short lived, will lack scale and ultimately won’t shift production away from extractive and exploitative practices.
All of this is additionally complicated because the way we buy and sell used items is affected by what an item actually is. In some cases the function and usefulness of a pre-owned item will be effectively the same as a new one, meaning that it can circulate in the economy for a very long time. A good example of this would be a book. On the other hand, there are products whose usefulness decreases over time and generate requirements to upgrade, like smartphones, and whose lifetimes are limited, such as washing machines. The relative desirability and prices of new and used goods depends to a large extent on their function and durability as well as the alternatives available.
We can attempt to figure out when it is ‘best’ to reuse, refurbish, recycle or replace objects through lifecycle assessment studies. When looking at carbon emissions, these studies suggest that we should hold on to or reuse products with high embodied emissions (those produced during manufacture), but recycle and replace those with high use-phase emissions (emitted when we use or charge a device). This is because newer versions of products such as refrigerators tend to have much higher energy efficiencies than their predecessors. That means that even if you would prefer to keep your current belongings or buy used products, there are reasonable arguments not to do so. Many of these assessments also take into account other factors such as water use, material footprint and the prices of the products. None of them however are able to fully capture the inputs and outputs associated with our production systems, particularly the social consequences. Indeed it is questionable whether we would want to make such cost-benefit style analyses when it comes to people’s lives.
What is depressing about the results of lifecycle assessments is the supposedly optimal lifetimes of products before you would be advised to replace them with newer models. They are typically somewhere between 5 and 20 years. It is hard to imagine a sustainable global economy where every household on the planet is upgrading their fridge every 15 years. To achieve this would require almost perfect a perfectly circular economy. The reality is that we are already at breaking point, levels of recycling are low and we haven’t even reached saturation point for the ownership of most household technologies. Additionally, most products that are sold cannot be or are not fully recycled.
Capitalism always delivers the goods
Although this knowledge is useful, it is important to remember that the characteristics and availability of the items we consume are not simply the result of combinations of technologies that happen to be laying about at the time. Their uses, desirability, reusability, recyclability and more are shaped by the economic system and the practices of manufacturers. Planned and psychological obsolescence encourage people to pursue endless upgrades. Restricting access to spare parts, designing sealed non-repairable products and controlling the repair industry are tactics used by companies use to limit the useful lifetime of products. The manufacturing of new ‘needs’ makes it harder to participate in society without owning the latest technologies. As long as these kinds of tactics are used by corporations, then consumers are fighting an uphill battle. It is hard to see how a commitment to buying second hand could cause a meaningful slow down in the rate of production of new goods, let alone an improvement in the conditions used to make them.
Any effort to reduce the horrendous impacts of our production systems through individual consumer choices is a swim against the tide of extraction, profit and growth imperatives created by capitalism. While buying second hand might distance you from social and environmental harms associated with a particular purchase and salve your conscience, it will do virtually nothing to reduce net consumption or stop destructive systems of production.
No more ethical time wasting
There are some points in support of making lifestyle changes. While the likes of eBay might promote consumerist behaviour, there is also evidence to support the idea that setting and achieving ecologically or altruistically motivated goals for ourselves reinforces reinforces those values and behaviours and decreases materialism, creating a virtuous cycle. Values and behaviours can spread to the people and institutions that we interact with and create small cultural shifts. Someone’s journey might start with buying used items and develop into a more frugal lifestyle which is arguably a positive, if small step in the grand scheme of things. That in turn might spread to their family and friends through social influence.
None of this however, is enough to believe that atomised lifestyle changes expressed through consumer decisions will seriously contribute to large scale, transformative change. In general, any action you take as an individual is infinitesimally small with respect to the size of global economic activity, and specifically for second hand purchasing we have seen that the impacts are debatable. To wholly believe in individual change is to follow the line of thinking of fossil fuel companies, who pioneered the idea of a personal carbon footprint in order to keep attention away from regulatory change that would prevent the burning of fossil fuels. Individual actions aren’t necessarily bad, but they are a distraction from structural change.
Significant and systemic shifts come from initiatives that operate on principles of collective action. When it comes to the material goods we use for example, structures of ownership can be changed by setting up a local tool library. These reduce the need for individuals to possess so many items, and are a promising way to reduce the demand for new goods. On top of this, there are policy and regulatory changes which can be made. The Right to Repair is a movement that aims to drastically increase the lifetimes and reusability of electronic goods. They campaign for legislation that commits manufacturers to designing repairable products and providing access to spare parts.[2] These initiatives are good and necessary immediate steps, but for long-term, large scale change we need to go deeper still.
When our outrage and despair about environmental and human exploitation is triggered by material goods, it makes sense that we seek to address the issues by changing the ways that we design, produce and own stuff. These things do need to change, but we should be mindful that looking at the problem through this lens limits our view of what is happening in two ways. First, it prevents us from looking upstream at the mechanisms that are ultimately responsible for the harms. Second, it excludes a range of actions we can take that would tackle some of those harms more directly.
Around the globe, there are many organised movements that make concrete demands of corporations and governments on issues such as workers’ pay, rights and conditions, the protection of indigenous land rights and much more. There are campaigns to block the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure and others that call for alternatives such as a globally just Green New Deal. Divestment campaigns seek to delegitimise oil, gas and coal industries and organisations such as Extinction Rebellion coordinate protests using civil disobedience to pressurise governments into taking more ambitious action on the ecological crisis humanity is facing. Yet more people organise within their workplace to push for climate action from their employers. Many others use their time to work with and influence local and national politicians or parliamentary candidates who vocalise shared ambitions around people and the planet.
There is also work to advance and strengthen the intellectual foundations of movements and politics through critique of existing systems and the generation of proposals for new directions. One emerging example is the degrowth movement which calls for high-income countries to reduce the material and energy throughput of their economies, redistribute wealth to the Global South and decolonise global trade. Degrowth philosophy calls for a culture in which we can exercise the freedom to decide the limits of our own consumption and its policies would see our societies oriented away from producing commodities to make profit for capitalists toward the provision of socially useful goods and services. It’s not just academics and writers who develop and promote political ideas that drive movements, but all kinds of people involved in activities such as making videos or podcasts, setting up reading groups, creating zines and subvertising. These actively spread ideas and connect us to others in the same movements. This is not a prescriptive or exhaustive list of movements or types of action, but points to the many possibilities beyond modifying our shopping habits.
So, you’re saying I shouldn’t buy things second hand?
Yes and no. To a large degree, this comes down to time and effort. If you’re buying something that is easy to come by in a second hand marketplace, then go for it by all means. However, if buying something used is going to take hours of research, scanning and deliberation then remember that you are very probably spending a serious amount of energy for something that will have a negligible net benefit to the world. If you want to actually tackle the issues that shopping brings into focus for you then you can do better than spend hours and hours attempting to craft your perfect personal circular economy. It might reduce feelings of guilt, but it is never going to have the impact you hope it might and so doing it to distraction is a huge waste of your motivation to improve conditions for humanity and our ecology. We have focused on shopping second hand here, but this reasoning applies to any decisions that result in endlessly weighing up the pros and cons of different products and consumption patterns.[4] To stand against the destruction wrought by our economy, the most powerful thing you can do is reinvest the energy you would have spent agonising over your shopping habits into joining forces with other like-minded people, dreaming, creating and fighting for a better world.
Footnotes
- Rebound effects happen when efficiency improvements or behaviour changes lead to less of a total reduction in resource use than expected. The unintended consequences can happen at an individual or system level activities. For example, using energy efficient light bulbs can lead to a person leaving their lights on more often and or a larger number of lights being used overall in society due to lower costs. This means that total energy use from lighting might be reduced less than anticipated or actually increase overall (this being known as a ‘backfire’).
- It should be noted, that the analytical models used in the bulk of this research assume that consumers are rational actors who act independently, consider a limited set of factors and whose are trying to arrive at optimal decisions based on these. They also assume that markets will arrive at an equilibrium state. Many economists dispute these notions.
- There is of course the chance that these kinds of changes will induce rebound effects that counteract the stated aims. For example, by letting people borrow items, they may partake in activities that use additional resources that they otherwise would not have, or they might be purchase an item after using a borrowed item as an opportunity to try it out. More modular, repairable items might lead to a proliferation of perpetually upgradable components.
- This does not necessarily extend to everything that might be considered individual change. This is a much larger conversation, beyond the scope of this article.
Thanks to Sarah Holliday for her comments on this piece.
