Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale

by Adam Minter

Fortunately, a lack of data doesn’t mean the trade in used goods is untraceable. But instead of finding it through data, a reporter must travel to the places where secondhand goods are collected, bought, repurposed, repaired, and sold. That might entail watching someone take a picture of a shirt and post it to Facebook, eBay, or Poshmark. Or it might entail following a Ghanaian buyer of old laptops from the United States to the city in northern Ghana where he sells them. Both are small acts that underline an often overlooked truth. Secondhand goods clothe, educate, and entertain billions of people around the world. And all this is accomplished using less energy and far fewer raw materials than what’s required for new goods. However, because governments tend to focus on the value of things made and sold new, the value of used things exchanged between people and businesses is generally invisible except to the people who are involved in buying, selling, and moving them.