Camacho-Otero, J., Pettersen, I.N. and Boks, C. (2020) ‘Consumer engagement in the circular economy: exploring clothes swapping in emerging economies from a social practice perspective’, Sustainable Development, 28(1), pp. 279–293. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2002

Shove, E. and Walker, G. (2010) ‘Governing transitions in the sustainability of everyday life’, Research Policy, 39(4), pp. 471–476.

Miller, D. (2008) The comfort of things. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Horton, K. (2020) 'Just use what you have: Ethical fashion discourse and the feminisation of responsibility', in Parkins, I. and Dever, M. (eds.) Fashion: New feminist essays. Routledge, pp. 109–123. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003010418

Eden, S. (2017) ‘Blurring the boundaries: prosumption, circularity and online sustainable consumption through Freecycle’, Journal of Consumer Culture, 17(2), pp. 265–285. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540515586871

Shove, E. and Walker, G. (2010) ‘Governing transitions in the sustainability of everyday life’, Research Policy, 39(4), pp. 471–476.

Smith, J. and Jehlička, P. (2013) ‘Quiet sustainability: fertile lessons from Europe’s productive gardeners’, Journal of Rural Studies, 32, pp. 148–157.

Shove, E., Pantzar, M. and Watson, M. (2012) The dynamics of social practice: everyday life and how it changes. London: Sage.

Camacho-Otero, J., Pettersen, I.N. and Boks, C. (2020) ‘Consumer engagement in the circular economy: exploring clothes swapping in emerging economies from a social practice perspective’, Sustainable Development, 28(1), pp. 279–293. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2002

Shove, E. (2003) Comfort, cleanliness and convenience: the social organization of normality. Oxford: Berg.

We live in a context of overproduction. Goods, especially textiles, move through households at increasing speed while the average use time continues to drop (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2019). Circular economy policies increasingly position wider reuse and extended product lifetimes as responses to the environmental costs associated with these patterns, yet their success depends on everyday practices that are labour-intensive and socially uneven (Hobson et al., 2021).

[No Singapūras pētījuma] Campbell-Johnston et al.’s (2020) argument that an item’s sequential (re)use is not a given. Rather, (re)use is underpinned by relational labour bound up in what Hobson (2020) calls social circularities.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of Brīvbode, a volunteer-run swapshop in Riga, where things circulate without money. It asks how freecycling is organised and sustained as a social practice in a non-monetary, non-domestic site, and what work it requires from those who participate. The study responds to recent calls (Hobson et al., 2021; Luukkonen et al., 2024; Mesiranta et al., 2025) to examine circular consumption beyond the household and outside the formal circular economy framework.

Work and care are close and overlapping concepts in this account. As Bankovska (2020: 13) observes in her ethnography of the Latvian organic food movement, drawing on Graeber (2018: 156), care is not always a joyful or pleasant act – it involves unanticipated effort, obligation, hesitation, and sometimes disgust. In this sense care resembles work: activities performed because they need to be done rather than because they are intrinsically rewarding. The chapter uses consumption work as its organising framework while recognising that the boundaries between consumption work, volunteer labour, and care work are difficult to discern in practice.

Wheeler and Glucksmann's consumption work concept names the structure: tasks that paid institutions would perform in formal retail or waste management contexts are here absorbed by unpaid volunteers and participants, distributed across modal and processual dimensions that stretch well beyond the freeshop itself. Bankovska and Graeber name the motivation: much of this labour is not transferred from institutions onto reluctant consumers but self-imposed through ethical commitment and care – activities people perform because they cannot bring themselves not to. Miller names who bears it: consistently and disproportionately women, from household sorting and routing to managing others' generosity to transmitting these competencies to the next generation.

“Circular economy frameworks, as developed in EU policy, are primarily oriented toward industrial supply chains, producer responsibility, and the systemic redesign of material flows at scale. Informal, community-based initiatives like Brīvbode operate largely outside this framework – they are not measured, not regulated, and not funded through circular economy mechanisms – yet they perform circular economy work in practice: keeping goods in use, extending object lifetimes, and diverting materials from waste streams. Hobson (2016) describes such initiatives as generative spaces of everyday activism, arguing that they occupy a productive but undertheorized position at the intersection of sharing and circular economy frameworks. They are neither fully legible to circular economy policy nor fully captured by sharing economy research, yet they enact circularity at the local, relational scale”

Akule, D., Milbreta, U. and Brizga, J. (2023) Collection and use of post-consumption textiles in Latvia. Riga: Green Liberty.

We live in a context of overproduction. Goods, especially textiles, move through households at increasing speed while the average use time continues to drop (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2019). Circular economy policies increasingly position wider reuse and extended product lifetimes as responses to the environmental costs associated with these patterns, yet their success depends on everyday practices that are labour-intensive and socially uneven (Hobson et al., 2021).

Mesiranta, N., Mattila, M., Koskinen, O. and Närvänen, E. (2025) ‘Circular consumption practices as matters of care’, Journal of Business Ethics, 200, pp. 13–30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05888-5

Watson, D., Hvass, K.K., Moora, H., Martin, K., Nausėdė, V., Gurauskiene, I. and Akule, D. (2020) Post-consumer textile circularity in the Baltic countries: current status and recommendations for the future. TemaNord 2020:526. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers. https://doi.org/10.6027/temanord2020-526

The bulk of things circulating in Brīvbode are textiles. Textiles have been identified as a priority sector in the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan (European Commission, 2020), and EU Textile Strategy (2022-ongoing) states that textiles should be durable, repairable, reusable, and reuse should be part of the desired system outcome. [..] [Statistics on Baltics as the destination in the circular economies of other countries…]

Data indicates that second-hand acquisition remains a significant part of the textile market in the Baltic States, particularly in Latvia, where it accounts for a substantial share of total consumption. In 2018 around 40% of textile consumption in Latvia was second-hand (Watson et. al., 2020). The collection system in Latvia has undergone rapid expansion and formalization through new legislation. Latvia introduced mandatory separate textile collection in 2023, reflecting the broader EU regulatory direction established by the Circular Economy Action Plan and the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles.

Belk, R.W. (1988) 'Possessions and the extended self in consumer behavior', Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), pp. 139–168.

Practice theories have been widely applied in studies of sustainability and consumption. Whereas previously widespread theories of consumption in the 1980s and 1990s often treated it as a matter of individual choice and identity-making (Belk, 1998; Featherstone 1991), theories of practice enabled attending to consumption patterns that emerge from the practices in which people are engaged, rather than mainly from their preferences or intentions. This decentring of the individual marked a significant departure from both the rational-choice models of consumer behaviour research and the identity-focused approaches of consumer culture theory.

The swapshop passes leftover textiles to textile collection containers – as researchers of post-consumer textile flows in Latvia were attempting to estimate, up to 30 % of the received flow (Akule et al. 2023). The shop would not be viable if it had to cover the costs of regular unsorted waste collection. Also, off-season clothing such as winter coats that take a lot of space are stored in collaboration with charity organisations that have access to larger storage premises. Brīvbode can continue operating – in a pragmatic, improvised manner – because of this material entanglement instead of trying to resolve the full material cycle on its own.

The bulk of things circulating in Brīvbode are textiles. Textiles have been identified as a priority sector in the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan (European Commission, 2020), and EU Textile Strategy (2022-ongoing) states that textiles should be durable, repairable, reusable, and reuse should be part of the desired system outcome. [..] [Statistics on Baltics as the destination in the circular economies of other countries…]

Akule, D., Milbreta, U. and Brizga, J. (2023) Collection and use of post-consumption textiles in Latvia. Riga: Green Liberty.

Data indicates that second-hand acquisition remains a significant part of the textile market in the Baltic States, particularly in Latvia, where it accounts for a substantial share of total consumption. In 2018 around 40% of textile consumption in Latvia was second-hand (Watson et. al., 2020). The collection system in Latvia has undergone rapid expansion and formalization through new legislation. Latvia introduced mandatory separate textile collection in 2023, reflecting the broader EU regulatory direction established by the Circular Economy Action Plan and the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles.

Watson, D., Hvass, K.K., Moora, H., Martin, K., Nausėdė, V., Gurauskiene, I. and Akule, D. (2020) Post-consumer textile circularity in the Baltic countries: current status and recommendations for the future. TemaNord 2020:526. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers. https://doi.org/10.6027/temanord2020-526

A shift began with the emergence of more institutionalised divestment infrastructures, such as the opening of the first Otrā Elpa charity shop in Riga in 2009. These initiatives introduced new channels for divestment, and gradually moved second-hand consumption from a one-directional flow of aid toward a more participatory system of reuse. Data indicates that second-hand acquisition remains a significant part of the textile market in the Baltic States: a 2023 representative survey found that 55% of Latvian participants currently buy second-hand clothing (Akule et al., 2023), and in 2018 second-hand accounted for around 40% of textile consumption in Latvia (Watson et al., 2020).