Pitfall of cheap consumer goods

IT started with a text message out of the blue. My eldest brother, who had lived abroad for many years and was at retirement age, had decided to come home.

On the face of it, this would be a happy family reunion given that I hadn’t seen him for a long time. Except for one problem… he was more or less destitute. In fact that was why he had decided to return to the UK.

A combination of bad luck and health issues meant that he had no savings, owned no property or anything of value and had no private pension entitlement. He and his wife had gone their separate ways many years before. He was homeless.

Fortunately, I come from a large family and between us we were able to house and support him for a while but this was clearly not going to be a long-term solution.

I am forever grateful that he eventually qualified for social security benefits and was found a small flat in an over-60s Soha development.

But the flat presented a new problem. It was completely empty apart from a cooker and my brother owned no furniture or household goods and had no money to buy anything.

We decided to take it as a challenge — to furnish the flat for the least possible amount of money.

And this is where I began to realise how very wealthy we are as a society overall. Few generations before us could have afforded to give away household items in good repair.

My siblings and I scoured our lofts and garages and produced a number of perfectly good household effects — curtains, TV, bedding. All serviceable but we simply no longer wanted them.

We visited charity shops and picked up sets of cutlery and plates for a few pounds. A lovely lady clearing out her deceased mother’s home in Fair Mile gave us a new fridge that she had been unable to sell. We picked up a pine bed and mattress in perfect condition for nothing after seeing it advertised on freecycle.org

Our generation can afford to do this because, compared to earnings, consumer goods are cheaper than they have ever been. Efficient manufacturing in volume brings down prices and provides choice.

This is wonderful in many ways but the flip side is huge waste. Givingworld.org.uk has found that more than £2 billion of surplus goods are generated in the UK each year, including essential items such as nappies, bedding and warm clothing.

In 2021 ITV News revealed that Amazon UK was destroying millions of items of unsold stock each year —- brand new computers, electrical goods, books and Fitbits, some destined for recycling but also much for landfill. All these will have taken energy and resources to make.

Amazon is not alone in this — fashion companies are known to burn oversupplied stock and most corporations making consumer products have a problem with overproduction and waste.

What can individuals do? At a personal level you can help to reduce consumer waste by giving away unwanted but working goods on Freecycle, Facebook Marketplace or to charities like the British Heart Foundation which will pick up second-hand furniture and electricals for sale in its shops.

If you work for a business that produces surplus stock of goods like toiletries, household goods or clothing you can donate them to charities like Givingworld.org.uk which will distribute them to people in need and claims to have saved 65,000 tonnes of CO2 from landfill over the last 22 years.

But the system itself needs to change. Buymeonce.co.uk is an organisation dedicated to recommending products that will last a lifetime.

It is sponsoring a petition calling on the Government to bring in a law which would force companies to donate useable stock rather than destroy it. Do consider signing — it’s at change.org and called “Make shops donate, not destroy stock”.