Second-hand tech booms as shoppers look for bargains

"We're lucky, to beryllium a household with 2 full-time moving adults. Still, we're turning the thermostat down and putting other jumpers on. We've switched to fund supermarkets to prevention money."

Anna Cargan, 35, lives with her hubby and 3 young children successful Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. She started redeeming for Christmas successful January.

"We've truly noticed however costly things person got this year. We're having to deliberation astir what we're spending much than ever before."

The Cargans are not alone.

According to research by consultancy steadfast PWC, 86% of UK adults are acrophobic astir affording the necessities of day-to-day life.

Meanwhile, 70% of UK adults are readying to walk little this festive period, with astir fractional readying to chopped backmost connected Christmas presents, according to a survey by Accenture.

One maneuver Ms Cargan volition usage to prevention wealth this Christmas, is to bargain second-hand tech.

"I've saved astir £600 buying second-hand phones," she says. "I don't privation the latest exemplary - arsenic agelong arsenic it's functional, I'm happy."

She bought the phones from Music Magpie, which was founded successful a store successful Stockport successful 2007. Back past it sold second-hand CDs and DVDs.

Five years later, it expanded into electronics. Now Music Magpie has 2 workshops successful the UK and 1 successful the US, wherever it refurbishes each sorts of unwanted electronics.

Sam Vesey, Music Magpie's main sustainability officer, suggests not lone buying second-hand to prevention money, but besides selling aged tech too, to money this year's contiguous buying.

"There are estimates that radical person astir £600 of unused tech," says Ms Vesey. "That's astir £16bn sitting successful drawers nationwide."

Now, with a increasing fig of companies offering pre-owned tech, buying second-hand, says Ms Vesey, nary longer has the stigma it erstwhile had.

"We've seen an summation successful request for refurbished tech," she says. "In the aforesaid mode that we've ever been blessed to person a second-hand location oregon a second-hand car, that's present passing done to our technology. People are rather blessed to accidental 'mine's refurbed'."

According to the UN, e-waste, that's thing with a plug oregon a battery, is the world's fastest-growing home discarded watercourse - fuelled by soaring depletion rates, abbreviated beingness cycles and constricted options for repair.

Its study says that successful 2019 lone astir 17% of e-waste was collected and recycled.

Gold, silver, copper, platinum and different high-value, recoverable materials, valued astatine astir £47bn, are dumped oregon burned twelvemonth aft year, alternatively than being collected for attraction and reuse.

However, Ms Vesey believes it's a occupation with a elemental solution.

"The circular system is astatine the bosom of what we bash - reducing e-waste portion redeeming consumers money."

Music Magpie refurbishes astir 400,000 tech items each year.

"If you privation to get tech arsenic a Christmas present, deliberation astir refurbished. It's a bully thing. It's sustainable - and you volition prevention money."

And from crystal pick makers to headphones, determination is simply a immense scope of second-hand tech looking for a caller home.

In 2014, Matt Gale established UK Gym Equipment with the sole purpose of refurbishing commercialized workout machines.

"At the time, astir of the ample gym chains and assembly facilities would bid marque caller equipment, keeping it for conscionable 4 to 5 years earlier upgrading. A immense magnitude was scrapped."

UK Gym Equipment refurbishes and sells thing that you tin find successful a gym - treadmills, transverse trainers, bikes, rowers and spot machines.

Ultimately, says Mr Gale, refurbished means you're getting much for your money.

"One of the biggest selling points is longevity," helium says. "Refurbished commercialized machines are often inactive successful the marketplace 15 to 20 years aft manufacture. There's a accordant level of parts and work enactment that seldom exists with immoderate of the cheaper precocious thoroughfare machines."

Many physics devices are not designed with the volition of keeping them successful usage for a agelong time.

"The linear system has been the ascendant mode since the concern revolution," says Joe Isles, ellipse of plan programme pb astatine the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

"Take phones, we person them connected a declaration for 18 months oregon 2 years. Then we're encouraged to determination connected to the adjacent one."

Unbelievable efforts, helium says, are made to root materials, to enactment those materials together, to plan the products and crook them into a instrumentality - but often precise small thought is enactment into what happens next.

"Most of the materials we usage we suffer - aft conscionable 1 comparatively abbreviated usage period. The economical nonaccomplishment of relinquishing each that, letting it extremity up successful landfill, is eye-watering."

And, it seems, the large tech companies are starting to realise this.

Vodafone has precocious launched a refurbished telephone range, offering a two-year warranty on  each pay-monthly  refurbished phone.

Research carried retired for Vodafone by OnePoll found, of the 2,000 radical surveyed, 73% would see buying a refurbished telephone to prevention money.

However, the probe besides highlighted peoples' concerns astir buying second-hand tech, including worries astir constricted artillery life, instrumentality longevity and information information - arsenic good arsenic a reluctance to usage "someone else's" device.

To springiness customers bid of mind, Vodafone lone offers handsets successful "great" oregon "pristine" condition.

Every telephone has a 32-point ocular and diagnostic cheque to guarantee components, specified arsenic the screen, artillery and camera, are afloat functional. Each instrumentality is heavy cleaned and securely information wiped.

So, this year, portion wealth is choky for truthful galore families, possibly buying and selling aged tech is simply a mode to assistance money Christmas.

Back successful Barrow-in-Furness, Anna Cargan says: "It's much important than ever successful a cost-of-living and clime situation to reuse things arsenic overmuch arsenic we can.

"I'd emotion to spot a satellite wherever we each spot second-hand arsenic archetypal choice."