Used or New – The real comparison of Sustainability – eeeSafe Community Safety Sustainability and Skills

As large organisations with money and infrastructure, take hold of used Electrical Items, we ask the question: What’s the most sustainable?

EEESafe has long lobbied against the Preparing for Reuse Protocol, known as PAS141. Not just because there is no evidenced Competence behind it, which in itself is a core Safety issue. After analysis in conjunction with British Standards Institute we were able to show that EEESafe is Safer than a British Standard however, Testing requirements are likely to build a mistrust in reuse, it impacts local economies, loses valuable resources were you live, as well as remove opportunities for professional repairers to earn a living where they live. Read on and see the bigger picture.

Lets Compare the AO (Appliances Online) model, since they’ve recently passed their PAS141 Audit.

Here is a used product for sale from their online outlet, where they collect your old machines and sell it back to someone else anywhere in the UK. It comes at an additional cost of £39 for delivery and install. We suspect most of us install ourselves.

AO Used Appliance

Now here is the latest NEW model, still A+++, 7Kg and 1200 Spin

Haire B12636 Model

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.

In a former Charity we helped set up and run for 10 years, we would be selling these units for around £130-£150
Are we putting jobs into other communities at the expense of losing them locally?
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.
How much embedded carbon from energy was used in the Reuse Operation at the Reuse unit? Collection and delivery Carbon cost was likely minimised through multiple units being in a van, but has this been evidenced when compared to refurbishing it locally.
Are we actually increasing Carbon by taking away repair opportunities locally? i.e. 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 etc
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.
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.

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, but these 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 need to 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.