Happy Friday from trade2save!For all our Gamers our there, the success of GameStop, Game Crazy, EB Games, etc. is nothing new and the impact of buying/selling/trading used video games on the new market is common discussion. For those non gamers out there, in quick summary the used game market has not only led companies such as the infamous GameStop (which buys used games for very little and resells at almost full price) to gain tremendous profits, but also has become and interest/concern for video game manufacturers because of the decrease in demand for “new” products. Recently  electronictheater.co.uk released an interesting look at video game companies attempt to deter used game sales by including special bonuses/privaleges for only those who purchase new copies of said game. While we here at trade2save frown upon the horribly unfair, used prices of game stores such as GameStop, we still love the pre-owned game market, as every new game produced still costs valuable resources and creates e waste! While we understand the gaming industries frusteration with lost sales, these new attempts to penalize those who choose to buy used ($60 per game IS quite pricey) is hurting both the environment and the consumer! Trade2save is interested to hear your take on this debate, so let us know your thoughts. One way or another, if you have a game that you no longer play, make sure to give it a good home, be it to a friend or through a fair priced dealer *cough* trade2save *cough* 

World renowned “Stanford Graduate School of Business” recently published the results of a study on the effects of upfront recycling fees for old electronics, and frankly trade2save couldn’t be more excited. In a nut shell, the research strongly suggests that not only will upfront recycling fees encourage the life span of electronics and reduce waste, but actually benefit manufacturers as well, giving them more time to develop new, innovative products.

The study chose to cite California as it’s example of a flat, enforced fee charged to consumers when recycle electronics. Not only does this fee ensure the proper and safe disposal of the e waste by avoiding shady middle man companies (who often export e waste to developing nations) but the enforced charge makes consumers less eager to toss electronics at a whim. In the current economic situation, consumers are getting more spend conscious and this extra recycling fee is just the nudge consumers need to realize that tossing their last generation ipod for a slightly newer model may actually not be worth it.

The study also cited staggering statistics on the wastefulness of global consumers, noting that Americans buy a new cell phone every 18 months and businesses replace entire fleets of PCs every 4 years. By creating such an immediate demand for new products, consumers effectively instigate the “Osborne Effect,” in which the anticipation for new products actually hurts current product and manufacturer sales. Stanford’s Erica Plambeck argues that by extending lifespan and reducing the demand for arbitrary new products (Woo! 3 megapixel phone instead of 2!), electronics “manufacturers are in less of a rush to introduce new products. Consumers anticipate using a product for longer, and so are willing to pay more for it. Because manufacturers have additional development time, they can make larger leaps in both product capabilities and quality, so the new products coming out are substantially better than the previous generation.”

This truly is a win win scenario for all parties involved, so as usual we here at trade2save hope this research gets the recognition it deserves from both consumers and manufacturers! By extending lifespans of electronics and buying/selling/trading pre-owned we can all do our part to reduce e waste and save ourselves some hard earned cash during this economic situation, which hopefully will permanently change our wasteful habits.

Check out a good summary article by greenbang.com !

Today, online e- gadget blog “engadget” released a fantastic article regarding recycling e waste.

While detailing the engadget’s own absurdly large collection of gadgets accumulated from years of electronics reviews, the article then continues to briefly mention the problem of e waste and detail the recycling policies of many electronic manufacturers’ recycling policies, costs, and respective url links.

We here at trade2save are once again genuinely excited to see the positive example set by large scale electronics websites such as engadget that have a large base of followers. Not only will this article hopefully improve consumer awareness to the importance of electronic recycling, but also will give the tools and resources for consumers to research proper electronic disposal. For those savvier on the global e waste problem, this article serves as an excellent way to track big name electronics companies’ e waste policies.

However, once again Trade2save really must emphasize the importance of buying/selling/trading your used electronics! “engadget” only briefly mentioned this option. Just by looking at the reader comments, many of which asking engadget for their used electronics, it’s obvious that one person’s e-waste is another’s e-treasure.  The constant demand for new products keeps this flow of e waste up, so never forget the option of re-selling your electronics before they become obsolete.

            The American economy is in the slumps and our culture of mass consumerism is being called into question both fiscally and morally. Originally posted in 2007, an extremely interesting and provocative lecture was held by McAlvany International Collectors Associates (ICA) economists, predicting the very economic declines and issues our nation is currently facing. Many of these very predictions seem to point to the growth of the pre owned sector in lieu of the current American economic situation. While it is always easy in hindsight to say these current recession trends were to be expected, more attention is now rightfully being given to the dramatic increase of gray market exchanges of used goods.

Perhaps the most relevant section of the lecture to trade2save.com concerns the issues of mass overproduction by China and other Asian exporters and the overconsumption by the US, specifically in the sector of consumer electronics. Fueled by economic bubbles created with the intent to encourage unsustainable amounts of production and purchases, a culture of spending and waste became the norm within the United States. Now, following the “.com” and housing market busts, millions of jobs have been outsourced, our purchasing power/currency is diminished, and our amount of “stuff” (including waste) and debt is overflowing.

Ironically it has been America’s spending power and over consumption that has kept its economy afloat over the past few years. With inflation and our weakening currency, saving money is far less profitable due to the dollar’s steady decline in value.  However, now with debt finally catching up to consumers and the ability to purchase jeopardized, Americans are now becoming more frugal and conscientious in their spending and demand for new products. While most would be right to see these economic changes as negative, this could also be the transformation in buying discourse and priority that the U.S needs to reduce personal and national debt. 

Just as trade2save.com encourages the buying, selling, and trading market for electronics, multiple indicators point to growth of buy/sell/trade markets and classifieds. Many business journals are reporting bulk consumer good superstores like “Sam’s Club” and “Costco” partnering with used electronics companies such as EcoNew.com and gazelle.com, partnerships that were unthinkable until recent events. As the spending power of the average American continues to fall, trends such as extended product use/life and buy/sell/trade expansion mark a major shift from the traditional market approaches by electronics companies.

As revenues from all consumer goods have fallen, the electronics industry took an especially hard hit, dropping as much as 50% in certain sectors. In a recent article, Electronics website and specialist “Electronics Design, Strategy, News,” or EDN, cited the major decrease in demand for new electronics is due to the lack of disposable income by consumers, a relatively new issue for the electronics market. EDN notes that “This downturn has a very different dynamic than anything that the electronics industry has seen before… Previous downturns were caused by too much capacity. This one…is caused by a steep and sudden drop in demand.” (Hamburt, 2009) With the entire population being affected by the recession, electronics companies are now forced to create new strategies to cope with “entire markets undergoing fundamental changes” (Hamburt, 2009). As electronics producers face lower demand for new products the pre owned market is flourishing, marking a major opportunity to focus on used electronics.

This growth of the buy/sell/trade gray market, specifically in the domain of used electronics, isn’t going unnoticed by consumers, many of whom are now purchasing from liquidated tech companies. With journals such as “U.S. News and World Report” publishing advice recommending the purchase of used electronics, its little surprise that electronics producers are witnessing buy/sell/trade exchanges taking a chunk of the electronics market. With many corporations going under, many of their electronic gadgets are being sold to liaison companies which refurbish and resell to businesses and individuals.

Liquid Technology Inc. is just one of many companies which, similar to trade2save, focuses on used electronics. According to economic journal “www.bloomberg.com,” the number of businesses filing for bankruptcy increased 42% in 2008, making failed companies’ electronics a major source for inexpensive technology. New businesses and individuals alike are all taking advantage of the situation, as “the fire sales have drawn customers that don’t normally buy used equipment…They’re finding they can still get brand-name equipment, such as computers from Round Rock, Texas- based Dell and Hewlett-Packard Co. or networking products from Cisco, at much lower prices.” (Hoffmann, 2008)

Buy/sell/trade gray market expansion is not just limited to electronic gadgets, as many forms of pre-owned home entertainment are gaining momentum and following the trend. With consumers opting to stay in and save money from costly outings, home entertainment such as movies (DVD, blu-ray) and video games are in high demand on the buy/sell/trade market. With companies such as GameStop making $2 billion on selling pre-owned games, nearly a third of GameStop’s revenue, it is clear that buying, selling, and trading xbox 360, playstation 3, Nintendo DS, and Wii titles is major market. Video game news site www.gamasutra.com reports that “numbers on resales are bound to head upward… as gamers — like everyone else — look to save a few bucks during the deepening recession” (Hyman, 2008).  According to a recent survey of gamers, 1 in 4 gamers who had previously never purchased pre owned video games or game consoles planned to start in the next year.  Furthermore, around 49 million gamers had purchased and 26 million gamers had sold a pre owned video game within the last year.

Perhaps even more telling is the rapid expansion of internet classifieds sites like “Craigslist,” which serve as popular channels for buy/sell/trade exchanges. According to Small Business Labs, in just the past year Craigslist.org showed a 105% year-over-year percent change in search prevalence, overcoming both “myspace.com” and “facebook.com.” This is attributed as a direct reflection of consumers’ increased interest in buying and selling used goods in order to save/make money during these harder financial times. Ranging from anything from laptops to last year’s iphone 3G, craigslist and classified represent a local effort to profit from what previously may have been stored in the garage or tossed.

 Along with the success of craigslist and buy/sell/trade markets, multiple other classified sites have been launched and are already expanding quickly such as ebay’s “kajiji” and oodle. As new, must have electronics continue to be released, these exchanges of used smart phones, PS3 slims, etc. still allow a cash strapped consumer to get the hottest tech gear, albeit at a lower price. Time magazine noted the fierce competition for online classified supremacy, as the once considered “stagnant sector” of online classifieds has grown 35% in the past year alone, totaling to a $15 billion market.

            With such buy/sell/trade  practices on a dramatic rise, it is a strong implication that companies such as trade2save, which specialize in the used/refurbished market, will play a major role in the future of American consumption habits. Trade2save loves our gadgets as much as the rest of the world, and while there will always be a demand for new, innovative products, hopefully we all as consumers can still manage to purchase the products we want (even if used) while selling our unwanted products for others to enjoy as well (and make some pocket cash!) While trade2save strives to encourage the moral fiber of such buy/sell/trade exchanges because of their huge environmental and humanitarian implications, the average consumer will profit regardless of their intent and can rest assured that they are both saving some green while going green.

References:

Hamilton, Anita. “Taking Aim at Craigslist - TIME.” Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com. 18 June 2008. Web. 15 Oct. 2009. <http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1814457,00.html>.

Harbert, Tam. “Electronics companies brace for a long, hard recession.” Electronics Design, Strategy, News. 10 Mar. 2009. Web. 14 Oct. 2009. <http://www.edn.com/article/CA6643065.html>.

Hoffmann, Katie. “Cisco, Dell Sales at Risk as Slump Fuels Gray Market.” Bloomberg.com. 5 Dec. 2008. Web. 15 Oct. 2009. <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=ag5pxFL3YpFY>.

Hyman, Paul. “As Recession Deepens, Used Games Get More Painful.” Gamasutra. Think Services, 8 Dec. 2008. Web. 15 Oct. 2009. <http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3872/as_recession_deepens_used_games_.php>.

King, Steve. “Craigslist Continues Strong Growth.” Small Business Labs. 23 Mar. 2009. Web. 14 Oct. 2009. <http://genylabs.typepad.com/small_biz_labs/2009/03/craigslist-continues-strong-growth.html>.

Lagesse, David. “Used Electronics Can Make Good Buys.” U.S News & World Report. 19 Feb. 2008. Web. 15 Oct. 2009. <http://images.usnews.com/money/business-economy/technology/articles/2008/02/19/used-electronics-can-make-good-buys.html>.

As pricing and repricing our inventory continues throughout this week, it has come to our attention that trade2save could use more video games! Believe it or not, there is a good market in used games, and trade2save is much more than willing to prove that by giving you a fair price unlike some retailers…*cough* *gamestop* *cough*

I know all you gamers out there have tons of titles gathering dust in your closets or game binders, so come take a look at what we’re offering for them and feel good that your games will be getting a first class spa treatment and then finding a new home. Take a look at our prices and if your game isn’t listed shoot us an email and we’ll get straight back to you.

Happy gaming!

The new pre-owned electronics marketplace, trade2save, will be launching imminently. Last week our 1st parcels went out to some of our earliest beta testing customers. The first parcel sent out was to Kevin Patrick, Manager of Business Development at USPS San Francisco. Jesse Wakefield of trade2save.com (pictured here with Kevin’s parcel) dispatched said parcel with diligence, efficiency and delight. The trade2save team then carried the parcel to USPS and spent the rest of the day celebrating at the Clay Oven Indian Tandoori Restaurant on Church Street Noe Valley. Only the hottest curry on the menu could do for such a special occasion.

Trade2save plans to specialize in buying and selling pre-owned electronics to encourage customers to trade-in their electronics so they can be reused to help cut ewaste - before they become obsolete.

Trade2save will also sell new products so long as customers  trade-in.

To encourage more trading-in, trade2save will be making new products available to customers as well as used electronics, providing that they trade-in at least 20% of the value of any new purchases made.

Customers can track their Carbon Footprint and earn valuable Carbon Points

In addition to paying the highest cash or trade-in prices available on the web, trade2save.com will also give Carbon Points for every pre-owned product bought or sold. On our website, customers can track their carbon footprint as every product has been given a carbon offset total. For example, we have calculated that a Thinkpad has a carbon footprint of 950 lbs of CO2. When a customer trades his in, we sell it on to someone who will buy it instead of a new one. This reduces demand for a new Thinkpad by one unit. If it is resold again, it reduces that demand by 2 and so on.

So his carbon offset total increases by 950 lbs. These Carbon Points can be redeemed in a number of ways. As well as trading them in for more store credit, when you reach certain levels, it will qualify you for special status, such as 10% more store credit for your trade-ins, and special gifts.

Every electronics product, be it a PS3 or an iPhone has to be manufactured, exported and eventually discarded as ewaste. By incentivizing a pre-owned market and making it more secure for buyers and sellers, ewaste streams can be significantly reduced. Currently the electronics industry has yet to be able to recycle more than 15% of an average product - this compares to an average car being over 90% recyclable.

Trade2save has been a massive development project, but we hope that the end result will wow you as much as it has wowed us. For a sneak preview of the beta site still under construction have a look.

Obama’s PR machine continues to fire on all cylinders to reassure a nervous America worried about trillion-dollar deficits stretching as far as the eye can see.

With imports continuing to extend a runaway trade deficit and no serious solutions to reverse the trend, Obama has a mountain to climb and little hope of stemming the crisis.

In an open letter to Timothy Geithner this week, trade2save urged the Administration to provide tax incentives to retailers offering to buy and sell used products to consumers.

Chris Whittome at trade2save writes “The amount of products coming into the U.S compared to exports is staggering.  Any attempts at cost cutting or reducing government spending pales to insignificance if we can’t get the trade deficit under control.”

Encouraging pre-owned could reverse a worrying trend

The argument put forward by trade2save is simplistic, but none the less compelling - “too many products come into the country compared to what goes out. If what came in was more readily reused and resold, the demand for imports would be significantly reduced.

$200 Billion a year on consumer electronics

Chris Whittome adds “Each American spends on average more than $1200 a year on consumer electronics. If half this amount was bought pre-owned locally, the trade deficit would shrink by $200 Billion a year. The money saved would likely divert to either locally produced goods and/or reduce consumer borrowing.”

More tax revenue for the local and federal government

Local and federal government would also benefit from increases in sales tax revenue as more pre-owned electronics were traded in the local economies at the retail level.

A greener more efficient economy

Tackling ewaste is a primary objective of the Obama Administration’s environmental policy. “Because buying a used product lengthens its life, encouraging pre-owned would also be in harmony with the Administration’s effort to tackle the explosion of e-waste and its links to pollution and global warming.”

Next month, trade2save.com will be launching an online trading portal where customers will be able to sell their pre-owned electronics to them, and also buy used ones with a satisfaction guaranty and 1 year warranty. “We hope that one day soon, buying a pre-owned electronics product will become as common and worry free as buying a certified pre-owned car from a dealership.”

It’s been a long time since our last blog post, in fact this is the first one this year and it’s already May!! But don’t think for a minute that trade2save has been in hibernation. We are very close now to launching a fabtastic new website - having overshot by about 9 months! My friends in the valley reassure us that a 9 month overshoot for a website of this scale is quite normal - well kind words I suppose, but back to the subject title…

We have looked very closely into the very high brow pricing tools that a number of sites are starting to use when buying products off of customers.

In some of my previous blogs I rant about poor trade-in prices given by online e commerce sites who are prepared to buy your used electronics for cash or trade-in value - See my previous posts about Best Buy and Sony (who both use ’sophisticated pricing tools to get you the best possible price’ - ’searching through thousands of prices for up to the second accuracy’) -

The marketing push for this service and also the success of buying-in trading portals like Gazelle (who’ll give you cash for your goods on the spot) show that there is a very large and lucrative market of not so savvy customers who won’t use eBay and flinch at the thought of opening their front door to a potential rapist who answered their ad on Craigslist to buy their used laptop.

These customers choose safety and convenience over squeezing every last buck out of their used digital camera - but boy are they paying through the nose for it!

One thing that unites what I like to call the rip off portals, is the use of so called sophisticated pricing tools. Basically what this means is getting a bot to trawl through sites like eBay and Amazon to get a price for what you’re selling, without them having to hire a team of pricing analysts who answer the phones or live chat with customers without needing to regularly update the prices on their database using standard demand and supply techniques.

The problem with these Bot pricing tools is that although they save trading portals a lot of money in terms of staffing, they are notoriously inaccurate.

To counter this problem, buying portals need to factor in a huge margin (in their favor naturally) - to prevent any inadvertent and costly mistakes the bot has gone and done.

Another issue is that they will never come close to any price a customer could get on eBay or Craigslist, so why bother trying? Why not tap into the market of the unsophisticated and blind them with technology, simplicity and cute little graphs showing a 6 month price index and forecast of the future price expectation (Why does the price graph always look the same?).

At the moment, unsavvy customers wanting to sell or trade-in their electronics can choose the difficulty of eBay or the simplicity of Best Buy, Sony or even Gazelle. I know which choice my mother would take, and this is precisely the market which is proving to be so lucrative - a suprising statistic given the state of everyone’s pockets today.

It’s not a very fair choice for people like my mum, but it’s a choice which they take willingly, in a complicated world, simplicity is the key for them - let others haggle on eBay for those extra bucks their laptop or cellphone might be worth.

Until, that is, they come across a simple, easy and sophisticated site which will actually give them an honest buck for their electronics. Watch this space…

The latest Laptop range from Apple is a new milestone in the company’s ethos to make more environmentally responsible consumer electronics. Critics like Greenpeace, who regularly beat their environmental breast plate to the rhythm of itunes have been strangely silent about the launch until recently. This may have been thanks largely to their inability to adequately market their evidence of ewaste abuse in China and trying to point a finger directly in the face of Steve Jobs.

They learned the hard way that it’s simply not cool to slag off something that’s considered cool to a large sway of their traditional support - college students and graduates. The backlash against Greenpeace was not a calculated stealth mission by a clever PR executive in Cupertino. The backlash came from within and was loudest on the Greenpeace website and blog.

As a result of falling contributions, Greenpeace has had little option but to back off so to speak - but the damage has been done, and it will take some time before they can shake off the conception that they’re a bunch of sanguine pretenders who pick on household brands to gain attention and not much else.

The good they have done on the subject of ewaste should not be swept under the carpet just because they’ve made a few tactical mistakes in their ongoing fight against ewaste.

It was Greenpeace who first opened our eyes to Guiyu, China. It took an organization like Greenpeace with a tradition of cutting through bull and border controls to bring home the shocking images of children, their hands and feet covered in mercury residue while washing themselves in a putrefied river, their single water supply.

Before then, people didn’t have any visual perception of how great the problem was. It was never considered a humanitarian crisis. Visual perception is a powerful weapon that can get things done fast - a power mobilized to full affect during the Ethiopian famine of 1984/5. For months previous we heard of thousands of people starving in Africa, but it took a crack team of BBC journalists to bypass border controls and get the images out. The rest was Bob Geldoff history, live aid and a fund raising PR machine which still raises millions today and provides rock stars like Bono and Sting a ringside seat at G7 summits - such is their influence as power brokers of global public opinion.

The revelations from towns like Guiyu had a similar opportunity to broker a new movement to tackle ewaste as a humanitarian issue, but the solutions proved to be complicate - it was much easier for Geldoff to scream at the camera “Give us your fucking money!” Raising money to buy food for the starving is a challenge - changing the fundamental problems of an eight hundred billion dollar electronics industry is something else.

If the problems of an industry can be distilled down to a single issue it is this: Only 10% of consumer electronics is recyclable. 90% will end up either in the ground or littered on the ground. Extracting the precious 10% out of this ewaste takes the lives of tens of thousands of peasant workers and their families every year through illness and disease caused by the toxic pollution created from the medieval recycling methods employed by their employers, who are (to all extent and purposes) gangsters.

Today GM and Chrysler are chastised for poor cars and wasteful management practices. But they are still able to produce cars which are over 90% recyclable. How is it that a car can be 90% recyclable, yet the greenest computer is still only 10% recyclable?

A car is 90% recyclable, the greenest Laptop is 10% recyclable… here in lies the green myth.

We don’t see mountains of cars rotting in piles so large they can be seen from space because legislation has been active for decades which demands adequate recycling and re-use. Your shinny new Hummer may guzzle that petrol, but you can be sure it’s made of 90% recycled material. Something to consider the next time an eco-warrior on his bicycle smugly tuts you to the tunes of his 10% recyclable iPod.

What’s more, 90% of cars are re-used 2-3 times (through second hand resale) before they are eventually recycled… compare this to 7% of consumer electronics.

90% of cars are re-used 2-3 times before recycling… only 7% of consumer electronics are re-used

Until electronics manufacturers have to abide by the same laws as car makers, the piles of ewaste will continue to double every 4 years. We are not going to stop buying electronics. What we can do is increase the reuse of electronics from a paltry 7% to a more respectable 50-70%, bring them more in line with the car industry. This would mean a significant drop in electronics sales and a dent in the trade of unrecoverable ewaste. We’d still be using the same cool gadgets with the same cool feature. Second Hand is cheaper of course, and with the economy on the bring of a depression, greener use of electronics might come sooner than later.

ewaste is something most people don’t attribute to themselves. But did you know that there is as much ewaste hidden away in homes as there is polluting the drinking water in places like Guiyi, China ?

As ewaste crusaders we want to see more folks trading in or selling their un-used electronics to other folks before they become obsolete. Because once they become obsolete, they become ewaste by definition.

   the answer is to trade in your electronics BEFORE they become obsolete

And that’s why we’re launching trade 2 save.

trade 2 save has been designed to make trading-in and trading up easier, while giving customers an honest trade-in price which is not the case with the ‘we buy’ trading portals currently available on the web.

At trade 2 save you’ll be able to buy and sell in the same transaction. You’ll be able to use the credit from what you’re selling immediately and you’ll get what you’re buying first. This is especially convenient for someone upgrading their cell phone. You get the cell phone you are buying first, and then send us your old cell phone in the packaging we supply (in most cases with free shipping) - all you pay is the difference in price if any. And in the same transaction you could also trade-in a DVD, a computer, some music, an iPod or something else.

And because we test and certify everything we buy off of our customers, the product you buy from trade 2 save will be graded for condition and guaranteed for a full year of normal use. This will enable customers to buy pre-owned with complete confidence.

When you sell to trade 2 save you’ll get 2 prices to choose from, a store credit price and a cash price. The store credit price is usually about 10-15% more than the cash price. The cash price is always good, however, if you are intending to buy something else from trade 2 save now or in the future, it’s always better to take the store credit, which never expires.

trade 2 save also has a marketplace where customers will be able to sell their products to each other using the same trade 2 save product pages. For this service, trade 2 save will take a small commission if you sell but will charge no listing fees whatsoever. It can remain their indefinitely.

trade 2 save will also level the playing field for small private sellers and so called power sellers. There won’t be any preferential rates - everyone will be able to take advantage of the same super low rates for selling on the trade 2 save market place.
We can’t always buy pre-owned, but when you trade something in to us we can sell it on to someone else before it becomes obsolete. Buying pre-owned reduces the amount of units demanded through manufacturing more, which will ultimately end up as ewaste.

   Did you know that only 12% of the material in electronics is recyclable?

Production of electronics and components have more than trebled in just a few years and only 12% of the material from them is actually recyclable (contrary to popular belief).

If you’ve got an old Pentium 3 in your garage that’s been sitting there for 4 years, then it’s too old to be re-used and re-sold. Recycling is the only viable option - providing it is not sent across the water to join a toxic dump (once 12% of it is extracted using toxic chemicals and a blow torch).

If you had traded the Pentium 3 in earlier before it became obsolete, someone else would have bought it pre-owned instead of buying another one new, reducing ewaste by a factor of 1 unit, or about 900 lbs of CO2.

These are tangible small changes to consumer habits which we can make at a time when we need to save money too. Trading-in your electronics and buying pre-owned when feasible doesn’t just make environmental sense it makes economic sense at a time when most of us are having to tighten our belts.

trade 2 save is set to open its beta site by Christmas.