Friends, family and the circulation of used goods: overlooked sustainability practices

In the pursuit of sustainable consumption, reducing acquisition and prolonging the life of household items – like clothing, appliances and furniture – has never been more essential. Practices such as purchasing second-hand goods, borrowing, sharing and passing items between people offer environmental advantages and social support and connection too. These informal exchanges of goods remain underexplored in sustainability and consumption research. This study draws on a unique national survey of 2,700 Australian households, shedding light on how everyday sharing of goods flows through informal networks of family and friends. We argue that these personal relationships are pivotal to both understanding and encouraging the circulation of used goods in a developed economy. Our findings reveal gendered, class-based and life-stage differences in sharing practices. We discuss the influence of social capital, which allows more privileged households to circulate goods more actively than their less privileged counterparts – a novel contribution to the literature. Households with children experience faster consumption cycles, driving greater circulation of goods. Generational shifts also play a key role. We contend that informal sharing – with family and friends – holds just as much significance as formal sharing economies in diverting goods from landfills and supporting sustainable consumption. This everyday circulation is vital to the sustainability conversation.

Received 6 November 2024
Accepted 17 May 2025

Consumption; families; relationships; circular economy; sharing economy

This paper provides insights into the social organisation of household consumption across product types and the potential of informal sharing and circulation of goods as sustainability practices. High urban household consumption levels are an emerging sustainability problem as the consequences of escalating levels of mass consumption continue to play out globally (Shittu 2020). As identified by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12 ‘Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns’, reducing consumption is critical for sustaining the livelihoods of current and future generations. In particular, households have some agency to contribute to target 12.5 to ‘Substantially reduce waste generation’ through ‘prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse’ (Raven et al. 2021; United Nations 2024).

We note that Australia is a developed country with heavy reliance on goods imported from Asia and an underdeveloped recycling system that has been in crisis since China stopped accepting waste for processing in 2017 (Wen et al. 2021). While there is quantitative information about waste disposal in Australia (Picken et al. 2022) there is limited prevalence data

about the circulation of goods. The national survey we discuss in this paper is novel because it captures circulation practices across product types – clothing and accessories, furniture and homewares, and white-goods and appliances – for the first time.

The literature on reducing consumption and socio-material churn sparked our interest in sharing goods as a sustainability strategy. To move away from mass and excess consumption toward a sufficiency approach, changes in social life and everyday consumption patterns are needed (Boström 2020; Karimzadeh and Boström 2024). Sandberg (2021) outlines four types of necessary consumption changes to achieve sufficiency: (i) Absolute reductions in the amount of consumption, (ii) Modal shifts which involve shifting to less resource intensive ways of consuming, (iii) Product longevity through extending product lifespans and (iv) Sharing practices where individuals share products. Circulating goods within and between households can contribute to each of these consumption changes. When goods are shared, borrowed, loaned or gifted between friends and family this can reduce the need to purchase new goods, extend product lifespans and increase the use of goods when they are shared. The household is increasingly recognised as a critical site

for sustainability transitions (Raven et al. 2021) and climate action (Dubois et al. 2019). In this paper, we argue that the household is critical for understanding the potential for reducing consumption by sharing and circulating goods.

Extending the life of goods through re-use and sharing are usefully understood as forms of 'churn' that are important for achieving 'a more sustainable socio-material future' (Lane 2023). Households form a node for material churn through common practices of sharing used goods within and between households. If international initiatives promoting product design for longevity (United Nations 2024) gain traction, these informal sharing practices could become even more important with goods passing through multiple owners throughout their product life spans. Indeed, social geographers have been adept in noting the importance of informal systems of provision with second-hand goods and household sustainability (Gregson, Metcalfe, and Crewe 2007; Horne, Maller, and Lane 2016; Lane 2011; Lane, Horne, and Bicknell 2009). Lane, Horne, and Bicknell (2009) found that in Australia poorer households were the most likely to access various channels for acquiring reused goods, and that wealthier households were most likely to be donating used goods to charity organisations. However, households with children were overall most likely to engage with all channels for the redistribution of household goods (Lane, Horne, and Bicknell 2009). Although it should be noted that demographic changes such as fertility decline, aging and the rise of single person households may reduce opportunities for household sharing and sustainability (Yates 2018).

The sociological literature on sharing goods in developed countries has focussed on the dynamics of the sharing economy. The emergence and development of the sharing economy was greeted with both hope and criticism by environmental sociologists. On the one hand, collaborative consumption web platforms enabled more sustainable and pro-social sharing of things between strangers (Fraanje and Spaargaren 2019). Urban sharing could be understood as an alternative economic practice that could be mobilised for progressive community development – to enable community collaboration, increase equity and local social capital (Santala and McGuirk 2019). (See also practices of 'diverse economies' as identified by Gibson-Graham (2008) have been given a broader reach through social media (Holmes 2018)). Non-market community-based sharing cultures such as tool libraries continue to develop in cities around the world to promote collaborative or shared consumption and meet the needs of residents (Katrini 2018). Initiatives such as food banks, community gardens and clothes swaps build on longstanding everyday practices of sharing, reciprocity and circulating goods within communities (Holmes 2018; Pahl 1984).

On the other hand, researchers noted that sharing platforms also offered a new way of commoditizing sharing – making it more efficient and profitable (Fraanje and Spaargaren 2019). As some sharing platforms became transnational companies, such as Uber and Airbnb, there were initial opportunities but also negative consequences in terms of job precarity of rideshare drivers and negative impacts on rental and real-estate markets in cities that attract large numbers of tourists and visitors (Katrini 2018). Significant scholarly attention has been paid to the rise of the sharing economy and sharing platforms while everyday informal sharing between households has been neglected (Holmes 2018).

Informal sharing of goods with friends, family and housemates has received only limited attention in sustainability literature with notable exceptions such as Burningham and Venn's research on intergenerational exchanges at key points in the life course (Burningham and Venn 2020; Venn and Burningham 2022) and geographers who have explored conduits of consumption and disposal (Gregson, Metcalfe, and Crewe 2007; Horne, Maller, and Lane 2016; Lane, Follett, and Lindsay 2018; Lane, Horne, and Bicknell 2009). However, there is a rich vein of research on sharing within the sociology of family and personal life that provides some useful insights for this study on the circulation of goods. A major insight from this literature is that 'things matter' in families, relationships and everyday life (Holmes 2019). Reciprocity and exchange are part of everyday life and embedded in social networks (Holmes 2018; Pahl 1984). Goods can be understood and perceived as simply useful 'objects' or as meaningful 'things' – particularly when they are entangled with relationships with family and friends (Ingold 2010; Venn and Burningham 2022). On the one hand, objects can be understood to have 'profound relational significance' but on the other they can be seen as 'troublesome', 'problematic' or failing to 'spark joy' (Ouellette 2019; Venn and Burningham 2022).

Material goods and kinship are interconnected (Holmes 2019; Miller 2008). Purchasing goods and passing on goods are everyday family practices – where the exchange of material goods both creates and demonstrates relationships – the making and doing of families (Finch 2007; Holmes 2019; Lindsay and Maher 2013). Social science research illustrates that even in advanced capitalist countries, the provision of financial and practical support between generations is relatively common and people have 'linked lives' across households (Venn and Burningham 2022; Zelizer 1996). Gifting of goods is about confirming and extending social relationships and this exchange operates alongside the market (Farbotko and Head 2013). Farbotko and Head (2013) argue that gifting has been largely neglected in discussions of sustainable consumption even

though gifting, especially Christmas gifting in Western countries, has substantial negative environmental consequences. In this paper, we suggest that in contrast to first-hand gifting, second-hand gifting and sharing may have positive environmental benefits as well as social benefits for strengthening friendship and family bonds.

Finally, the literature suggests that social stratification according to wealth is useful for understanding social patterns in the circulation of goods. Bourdieu's concept of social capital may be useful for investigating the dynamics of household sharing and the links with social class and stratification (Bourdieu 1986). From Bourdieu's perspective social capital is understood as the benefits that can be derived from social networks. For disadvantaged people, relationships of exchange and sharing have been identified as ways of managing disadvantage (Stack 1997). This mirrors the importance of mutual assistance between households in poorer countries where social welfare is limited (Fafchamps 2011). At the outset, we expected that poorer and disadvantaged households would be more likely to circulate goods out of financial necessity. Little is known about sharing goods among advantaged cohorts in wealthy countries. However, we do know that financial support from family is as a major driver of advantage among wealthy cohorts in English and Australian families (Martin and Roberts 2021). Intergenerational transfers of financial support to young people, the so-called 'bank of mum and dad' is increasingly important for young people to enter the housing market and secure their class position in Western countries including Australia (Adkins, Cooper, and Konings 2021; Scanlon, Whitehead, and Blanc 2019; Toft and Friedman 2021; Cigdem-Bayram, Whelan and Wood 2024). Beyond housing, there are class differences in gifting of money, where wealthier cohorts are more likely to receive gifts and inheritances than poorer cohorts (Martin and Roberts 2021; Nolan et al. 2020). There is little research on whether gifting second-hand goods follows similar patterns. Gregson and Crewe (2003) in their seminal research on second-hand cultures in the UK found that gifting items that had been purchased second-hand was connected to class identity: it was acceptable among middle class participants and linked to middle class aesthetics. By contrast, they found that gifting an item purchased second hand may be considered offensive and 'rarely occurs with working class families or friendship groups' (Gregson and Crewe 2003, 182). In summary, emerging research suggests that social capital holds significance for understanding pro-environmental behaviour (Macais 2016) and we posit this may also be the case for everyday circulation practices.

In this paper, we explore the environmental and social significance of the circulation of goods between

friends and family in Australia. We seek to answer the following research questions

An online national panel survey of 2,700 participants across Australia was conducted online in March 2022. The survey aimed to capture the prevalence and socio-demographic patterns of consumption practices, on three broad categories of large/durable items (clothing and accessories, appliances and white goods and furniture and homewares) which have been identified as challenging municipal waste streams. We also asked questions on food consumption and food waste, and single-use and reusable household items and attitudes toward waste and sustainability. The questions on large/durable goods were organised around three themes: acquisition (purchasing new, second-hand purchase or borrowing), prolonging their use (maintenance/repair and sharing with others) and disposing (passing it on and disposing). One individual from each household completed the survey and the questions asked about individual and household practices. Ethics approval was granted by Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee on 5 January 2022 to conduct this research (approval number 31,156). Participants provided informed consent before participating in the research.

In this paper, we examine three streams of consumption of durable items: 1) clothing and accessories, 2) appliances and whitegoods and 3) furniture and homewares. Following insights from the literature, we examine the impact of life stage, household type, socio-economic status (SES) and gender on low waste consumption patterns. All but one variable used in this paper are self-explanatory. Social advantage of a household was measured through responses to a question in the survey on socio-economic status: 'When thinking about broader society, where would you put yourself and your household on this scale of socio-economic advantage?'. The responses ranged from 1 (most disadvantaged) to 10 (most advantaged). The motivations questions followed a similar format for each product and type of circulation. For example, participants were asked about acquiring goods second-hand goods as follows: 'I/we acquire

the following types of household goods second-hand for the following reasons – select up to three reasons’. The options listed were ‘It is convenient (i.e. close to home)’, ‘I only need it for short-term use’, ‘I prefer it/it makes me feel good’, ‘Others would approve of me buying second-hand’, ‘It saves money I can’t afford to buy new’, ‘I want to support particular businesses and organizations (e.g. charities, non-profits)’, ‘I care about the environment’ and ‘I want to avoid waste and want to consume less’.

In this paper, we report on national trends and focus primarily on the circulation and sharing of used goods. Participants in three cities – Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne – were oversampled to facilitate finer analysis of different policy contexts for a separate analysis and sampling weights were used in the analysis to account for oversampling in the three cities. The sample was representative in terms of gender distribution. For analytic purposes and given the small numbers, we leave out those who identify as non-binary/gender diverse and those who ‘prefer not to say’ from the bivariate analysis. Key sample characteristics are reported in Table 1. The data analysis package STATA (version 18) was used to conduct univariate analysis in part 1, multivariate analyses in the form of logistic regression in part 2 and crosstabs reported in part 3 of this paper.

We argue that informal sharing with family and friends is the original version of the sharing economy, the 'hand-me-down/around economy' as Gregson and colleagues call it (Gregson, Metcalfe, and Crewe 2007), which has been largely unrecognised in research on sustainability or ethical consumption (Karimzadeh and Boström 2024).

Our key finding is that circulating second-hand goods between friends and family is relatively common but not yet normalised social practices in the Australian population. We found that key demographic variables – life stage, gender and social class were all important in shaping the circulation of goods. Life stage was particularly important. Young people are likely to be in the process of setting up shared households and their own family (Dempsey and Lindsay 2014). By contrast those in the older age group over 65 are more likely to be downsizing and divesting goods. As Venn and Burningham found in their study of consumption and retirement, after a lifetime of consumption there is often a substantial 'material convoy' of goods to manage and divest as people age (Venn and Burningham 2022). We found that many older people avoided purchasing second-hand goods but were happy to pass on goods for altruistic reasons.

Our data suggests there may be a generational change underway with circulating goods in Australia. Younger generations were more open to purchasing second-hand goods, and lending and borrowing goods. These practices were perceived as socially approved and even preferred rather than stigmatised among their circles. Our data also suggest that having children in the household encourages the circulation of goods, again it is perceived as socially acceptable rather than stigmatised (cf Gregson, Metcalfe, and Crewe 2007). Unfortunately, our cross-sectional survey cannot tell us if whether these generational differences will hold over time or whether they are life-stage or age-specific. We recommend

that research following circulation practices by a cohort over time would be valuable for increasing our understanding of these issues.

Gender differences were apparent with the circulation of clothing but less so for other goods. Women were more actively involved in circulating clothing (gifting and clothing exchange) with family and friends than men, which suggests that the women who circulate clothes are part of dense networks of trust. This may also reflect two things – firstly, women's greater engagement in fashion cultures and social proscriptions for new looks (McCracken 2014) and secondly women's greater engagement in domestic labour and caring tasks, and environmental labour (Farbotko 2018; Lindsay et al. 2024). Creating a 'circular wardrobe' through sharing and gifting may provide a way of combining consumption desires and sustainability values (Bissmont 2020).

We found that consumption patterns are shaped by class in interesting and unexpected ways. Those who identified as more advantaged were more likely to report borrowing, and lending clothing and furniture to family and friends than disadvantaged. We speculate that social capital (Bourdieu 1986) is at play here – more advantaged people have greater access to networks of wealthy people with excess items they are not using all the time. It also speaks to high levels of trust among networks for people to have connections they can borrow goods from. Conversely, perhaps less advantaged people do not have networks of people they can borrow from or there may be social stigma to borrowing items. We note that economic need was downplayed as a motivation for circulating goods among all groups.

The patterns we identified in gifting, borrowing and lending goods follow intergenerational and classed patterns of financial support reported in the literature – where young people from wealthy families are more likely to enjoy financial gifts from parents and grandparents than the less advantaged, particularly for the purchase of housing (Adkins, Cooper, and Konings 2021; Martin and Roberts 2021). Our findings suggest that for young people from privileged backgrounds, the bank of mum and dad metaphor (Cigdem-Bayram et al. 2017) may extend to the clothing, appliance and furniture shop of mum and dad too. Yet the implications of these findings for sustainability are not clear cut – more research is needed to explore if advantaged cohorts circulate more and reduce their consumption consequently or whether they simultaneously circulate more, consume more and dispose of more household goods.

Importantly from a sustainability, and social connectedness perspective, there are others who are excluded, or exclude themselves, from circulation processes. Older and non-tertiary educated people stand out as preferring new goods and keeping them for

themselves rather than circulating with others. There are several potential explanations for this. It may be that self-reliance is an important value for these cohorts. Alternatively, they may not have trusting social networks to engage with, or they may not like the social obligations attached in the gift economy (Thygesen 2019). Finally, avoiding circulation may be a strategy to avoid negative judgements from others and preserve respectability (Gregson, Metcalfe, and Crewe 2007). Our survey findings are intriguing, and further qualitative research is needed to explore the connections between social networks and sharing of goods.

As noted in the literature, the rise of small households in developed countries is problematic from a sustainability perspective because it is less efficient in terms of the consumption of goods and resources such as energy and water (Yates 2018). Our findings provide some support these concerns. Those in single person households were less likely to be involved in sharing and circulating goods with friends and family than others.

We find the concept of social capital (Bourdieu and Richardson 1986) is useful for interpreting the circulation patterns we identified in the data. We were surprised to discover that advantaged cohorts were more likely to acquire goods second-hand and borrow goods than less advantaged – in contrast to earlier Australian research (Lane, Horne, and Bicknell 2009). Our data suggests that if you are more advantaged and in some cases, more educated you are more able to share and borrow different types of goods. We found that accessing second-hand goods mirrors patterns of financial support discussed in the literature (Martin and Roberts 2021; Toft and Friedman 2021) – if you are wealthier you are more likely to receive support than if you are not. Conversely, it may be that when you are disadvantaged there is social stigma to second-hand purchasing, borrowing or lending that is not present for more advantaged groups (Gregson, Metcalfe, and Crewe 2007).

Finally, we would like to argue that relational practices such as caring and sharing with friends and family are critical for understanding and supporting household sustainability, sufficiency and ethical consumption (Karimzadeh and Boström 2024). Sustainability labour is carried out alongside, and as part of, everyday practices of care – whether this is circulating goods between households as we

have discussed in this paper, managing waste and recycling (Wheeler and Glucksmann 2015), striving to live sustainably (Farbotko 2018) or downshifting (Lane et al. 2020). The policy implications of this research are that circulating goods through relationships may be as important as the sharing economy in extending product lifespans. Focussing on the movement of goods primarily as market transactions through charity shops or the sharing economy may be missing most of the action and a major opportunity for supporting the circulation of goods. Just as things matter in relationships, our findings show that relationships matter in the management of material things.

We are grateful to Ms Jennifer Macklin and Dr Kim Borg for sharing the survey questions they developed for their research on consumption and waste. We thank Dr Dan Santos for the research assistance he provided in developing and administering the questionnaire and to Dr Apoora Nambiar for data management and preliminary analysis.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

This project was funded by the Australian Research Council Grant number [DP200100324].

Jo Lindsay, is a sociologist in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Jo conducts research in the fields of sustainability, consumption, families and households. She also undertakes interdisciplinary research and supervision on sustainability, households and communities. Her current work focusses on household innovation and the transition to the low waste city and community engagement in the upcycling of carbon waste. Jo is president of the International Sociological Association RC24 Environment and Society.

Ruth Lane, is a geographer in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Her research focuses on the intersections between social change, environmental degradation and environmental governance. She has studied the consumption of goods and materials, and associated issues of waste, reuse and materials recycling, and of the social and cultural aspects of land use change in rural and regional Australia and its biodiversity consequences. Her current research sits at the interface between social science research on consumption and the study of socio-technical transitions at the interlinked scales of the household, the city and the nation.

Dharma Arunachalam, is a social demographer in Sociology in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. He received his PhD in Demography from the Australian

National University and was a Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fellow at the Population Studies Centre, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA). Dharma's current research focuses on: fertility and partnering, social cohesion, international migration, family and household structures, household sustainability, population research, ageing and health. Dharma's research also covers demographic issues in India.

Rob Raven, is an interdisciplinary scholar, professor of sustainability transitions and deputy director (research) at Monash Sustainable Development Institute at Monash University. He is also visiting professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. His interest is in understanding the dynamics and governance of sustainability transitions and socio-technical innovation. Rob has made major contributions to multi-level theories of transformative change, socio-technical experimentation and strategic niche management. His empirical work has covered urban, energy and mobility transition processes in Europe, Asia and Australia.

Jo Lindsay http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9717-627X