New SUEZ research shows customers buying pre-loved items for environmental and cost-saving reasons

It comes after SUEZ confirmed that its re-use shops and Renew Hub helped to prevent 500,000 items from being disposed of in 2023 – equivalent to almost one per minute. Furniture, electricals and children’s toys are amongst the most sold items at its shops.

SUEZ operates 30 re-use shops and a Renew Hub on behalf of local authorities across England and Scotland. The shops help fix, repair, upcycle, resell or redistribute pre-loved donated items to someone in the local community to be used again.

As part of SUEZ’s ongoing investment into the development of its services and growing re-use network, the business set out to explore what drives people to buy reused items.

Keep Britain Tidy conducted the research on SUEZ’s behalf across its network of re-use shops, with face-to-face surveys taking place during May 2024 at 11 locations in Greater Manchester, Surrey, Devon, Calderdale and Aberdeen.

Key findings from the research include:

• Almost 50% of customers gave an environmental reason for using their local re-use shop, and 20% of customers gave a financial reason, revealing that stopping items from becoming waste and saving money are the biggest motivators for reuse shop customers.

• Customers enjoy the experience - 89% of customers said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with their experience of using their local re-use shop.

• Having a regular turnover of stock and making sure it’s presented well plays a key role in determining the quality of the customer experience, 86% of customers mentioned that the items they want are displayed well and 79% were confident they could find something they needed or wanted.

• Once someone starts using the re-use shop, they continue to visit - 9 in 10 customers have visited at least twice before.

• More than 40% of customers have or would make a specific trip to their household waste recycling centre just to visit their local re-use shop.

• More than half of non-users are already participating in other second-hand shopping behaviours.

In total, 707 people (517 re-use shop customers and 190 non re-use shop users) took part in the research.

SUEZ plans on using the results to develop its current services, working with its customers to offer the best possible experience and feeding into its longer-term vision and plans for re-use, as it continues to grow its network of re-use shops and associated activities. Two more re-use shops have been launched in Cornwall this year, with additional shops in the pipeline over the coming months. It also complements the ongoing work that SUEZ is undertaking to demonstrate to central government the need for more national policy focus on re-use and the higher tiers of the waste hierarchy.

Commenting on the findings, Sarah Ottaway, Sustainability & Social Values Lead at SUEZ recycling and recovery UK said: “It’s promising to see that there is a strong appetite for purchasing pre-loved items through our network of re-use shops. Our findings show that even those who are not using them are already participating in other second-hand shopping behaviours, meaning that encouraging them to use their local HWRC re-use shop is simply adding to existing positive habits.

“What these findings show is that our retail offering is being well received by our customers, and that there is real potential to keep items in use for longer by expanding on this so it’s easy and convenient for people to access quality pre-owned goods at their local HWRCs. Our teams across SUEZ’s re‑use network are already using the learning in their efforts to continually improve how we operate and develop our re‑use services, and the findings are also useful for anyone currently operating or intending to open a re-use shop at a HWRC.”