Buying Second Hand-Saving money, while saving the world
Sounds rather dramatic, doesn’t it? SAVE THE WORLD by buying second hand, but honestly, it’s actually exactly what you’re doing when you decide to buy a pre-loved item over a new, mass-produced one.
Let’s start at the beginning. A 2015 study found that the production and use of household goods and services was responsible for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. 60%. Let that sink in.
We are complicit
Most of us remember environmental activist Greta Thunberg at the UN Climate Change Summit, shouting “How dare you?!” to hundreds of world leaders. How dare these Nations not put in place sanctions and regulations to curb the emissions of fossil fuels into the atmosphere, for example. And let’s be honest, we’ve all been happily pointing fingers at corporations like fossil fuel giants TotalEnergies, British Petroleum, Shell and the likes, seeing as this global warming crisis is mostly their fault.
But that’s not really how it works, because we too are complicit. We need to remind ourselves, that most of the “stuff” that we buy is produced by making use of these fossil fuels. If we cut down on buying newly produced items and started buying second hand items, the demand for fossil fuels would drop dramatically, leading to a fraction of the environmental impact that these companies have.
Planned obsolescence
So what is stopping us? One of the reasons we are hesitant to ditch the purchase of new, mass-produced products is because we are told that if we don’t continue supporting these companies, a lot of people will lose their jobs, as these major companies pay for a lot of salaries. This is also not entirely true. For example, have you ever had a phone for a few years and after a while it would just stop updating, keep giving you errors such as a full memory, no matter how many apps and pictures you deleted, all which forced you to get a new phone? This is a very clever, and very manipulative strategy by mass-producing companies called planned obsolescence.
What happens is the following: In the fast fashion industry, for example, clothes are designed to fall apart after being worn only a few times, or are marketed in a way that makes the consumer believe, that they have to be replaced regularly, leading to “older” ranges not being purchased, and thus discontinued by the retailer. Prices are kept artificially low to encourage us to buy because the real costs of their creation—which should include their environmental and social justice impacts—are not figured in. This leads us to the purchase behaviour of the average consumer to be so overindulgent, that only one percent of “stuff” is still in use six months from its purchase. A sobering thought, don’t you think?
Easy-peasy second-handy
What is really great about buying second hand, is that you are not required to source your items from ethical companies that charge you ten times the price. You actually almost always save money!
You don’t have to drive two towns over to get to that one store where you can buy pre-loved items, because they are extremely popular, especially in bigger cities. The UK alone boasted 3820 second hand stores in 2020. Thrifting and the likes also really builds communities, as thrift stores are usually run by locals, who you get to know personally, build relationships with, all while supporting their local small business.
Lastly, a lot of second-hand stores support great causes with their profits. That’s a win-win situation in our books, for sure. Time to make that change, don’t you think?
