Used or New - A true Sustainability Comparison

So what can we learn from this when asking ourselves is it the most sustainable thing to do?

Perhaps we need to think about some other things when making a Sustainable Choice and perhaps hitting local economies when using Closed Loop Models. This is what we see when Local Authorities and Producer Compliance schemes are shipping goods back to large factory and reuse outlets elsewhere and not in your local community.

1. In a former Charity we helped set up and run for 10 years, we would be selling these units for around £130-£150
2. Are we putting jobs into other communities at the expense of losing them locally?
3. Is Reuse really cost effective when you take reusable goods away from the Community?  We see that the newest model was actually £30 more than the used one, with the difference just being the installation. But is this a negative social impact locally?
4. How much embedded carbon from energy was used in the Reuse Operation at the Reuse unit? We must include the collection and delivery Carbon, Energy Use and financial cost. It’s accepted that was likely minimised through multiple units being in a van from a central location, but has this been evidenced when compared to refurbishing or repairing it locally.
5. Are we actually forcing someone who could work where they live to travel further each day for another job, polluting the air, increase energy use, costs of running their own transport.
6. Maybe they are even running their own local shop and it’s associated costs when a fix at the home would most likely be the most cost effective, especially when by an EEESafe Embedded Certified Community Repairer.
7. Are we pushing people into taking on debt on leasing costs or rental costs, when compared with owning the appliance from first purchase?  Amazon offers to spread the payments over 5 months making it the same cost. However AO is selling finance as well, currently using PayPal Credit. This works out at the same purchase price however, it’s only because there is an offer from Paypal, to promote their new service.  Eventually this will be an APR of 25% but may change.  There are Pros and Cons using this model, one of the Cons being it may encourage users to spend more money, which isn’t really going to help tackle poverty.  Read details on this HERE.
8. Once a Certified or Qualified repairer is embedded on the neighbourhood estates, and passed their assessments, these repairers can quickly fix any electrical item, at a far lower environmental and financial cost. Is this going to be impacted by closed loop models?
9. Are we taking away the right to own something?  AO are trialing rental of Appliances from £2 per week to include insurance and repairs and you can renew it after 5 years.  So two years of rental of an appliance is £208.00.  The 3 years left of use before you can change it means another £312.00 and you can’t even sell or donate the old appliance to help someone. This is an old Radio Rental model revived and doesn’t really help tackle poverty either and is tempting people into more debt.  It’s a total ownership cost of £520.00 over the 5 years and doesn’t put safe repair into the community, as you cannot identify qualified competence, except with EEESafe. However under the ECO Design Directive we see appliances expected to have spares for between 7 to 10 years and should be built to last longer. So the longer you own your Appliance, the more sustainable and cost effective it should be.  It’s Consumption that’s driving the need to make money for the large corporates and its the Consumption model we need to change, if we’re going to #BuildBackBetter.
10. How much money is going to be tied up with 10 subscription charges of household electrical items. There is a global cost of living crisis, and indications are debt is only going to increase.

Read our Squaring the Circular Article to look more closely at the Pros and Cons of this type of selling.

There are more things to consider along but at EEESafe, we believe in delivering Community Consumer Management at the local level enabling citizens to operate their own LocalitEEE model and become a greater influence in building a more sustainable planet.  Everyone is a consumer and everyone needs to be engaged in the Circular Economy.  Large Corporate organisations with owners and directors all with large wage demands are part of the problem, and we see that strikes for high wage demands are only going to increase inflation. However, Businesses are are our partners as well and we need to learn to work together to achieve a sustainable consumption model.  Greed is the fuel that drives Poverty and we must eradicate poverty and look after each other.

See our snapshot image below and/or Watch a Presentation to see how we’re going to do this.