Eco babies: reducing a parent’s ecological footprint with second-hand consumer goods

Abstract

Consumption together with a growing global population greatly threatens the environmental security of our planet. This paper argues for direct reuse of products as the most sustainable form of consumption, over and above recycling and the use of greener technology. A parent or carer is responsible not just for their own ecological footprint but also that of their dependent, as they make consumption decisions on behalf of the child. One in five parents have acquired a greater number of second-hand items for their child/ren since the onset of the 2009 financial crisis therefore, consciously or unconsciously, parents are engaging in sustainable consumption practices. This empirical study contributes to the small volume of literature on second-hand consumption to investigate the extent to which mothers engage in second-hand consumption practices and the environmental impact this has. 30 mothers were recruited for in-depth interviews. Whilst primary motives were almost universally found to be financial, participants showed a strong ethical desire to reuse items which, by their very nature, had not reached the end of their useful life before being made redundant by the family

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