Buying five reused items saved me £3.5k – the government should help everyone do the same

I think my love of the circular economy may have started with the love of a bargain. I can’t begin to calculate the many thousands of pounds I’ve saved only filling my wardrobe with secondhand clothing and furnishing my home with high quality finds from Freecycle, Marketplace and the like.

But I appreciate charity shops aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, and not everyone has the time or inclination to root around in their local tip shop. The good news for those who feel that way but who still love a bargain – or want to improve their social and environmental impact – is that there are now lots of ways to reuse and rent.

Everyone’s heard of Vinted. The peer to peer reselling platform is now the third largest fashion retailer in the UK. And Back Market, the online marketplace selling professionally refurbished electronics, has just been listed as one of Time’s 100 most influential companies of 2026. But there are plenty of other options coming online, including original manufacturers getting in on the act, refurbishing and reselling their own products at a discount, with warranties to match.

So, to prove just how helpful the circular economy can be in a cost of living crisis, I thought I’d highlight five recent purchases that have, together, saved me £3,500:

1. A John Lewis sofa from Sofalistic cost £175 + £130 delivery, compared to around £1,500 + £20 delivery new, saving me more than £1,200
Platforms like Freecycle and Facebook Marketplace, and even eBay, are ideal for finding furniture bargains, though the local selection can be limited and difficult to access without transport. What I liked about Sofalistic is that it vastly expands the market to the whole of mainland UK, for a flat £130 collection and delivery fee. That meant we had plenty of options when we moved into our new home recently and needed some new furniture to fill it. Most sofas on the site were more expensive than on local exchange platforms, but I found that, if people were looking to get rid of something quickly, a bargain could still be found. We wound up paying about a tenth of the retail price for our nearly new John Lewis sofa. And it’s a beauty: wood framed with tweed fabric and feather filled cushions, in a size that fits perfectly in our new living room.

2. A refurbished Samsung Galaxy S20 5G model from Back Market was £179, compared to £899 new, saving me £720
I’m not alone in having discovered Back Market (and there are other platforms offering similar refurbished tech, like Envirofone). Back Market seems to be increasingly prevalent, though, and, since launching in France in 2014, it’s grown to 18 million users. I’m sure the cost savings made, combined with the fact that products come with warranties, have played a big part in this growth. When Green Alliance did some analysis of products on the site a couple of years ago, we found people could save, on average, 28 per cent on the price by buying a lightly used version of the latest iPhone, Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel models. I know from personal experience that buying slightly older models can offer considerably greater savings and, as technology improvements slow down, so too should the drive to always own the latest model. When my last phone died, I snagged a professionally refurbished 5G compatible Samsung S20 for about a fifth of what it would have cost new.

3. Certified refurbished Bose Ultra Open Earbuds headphones were $179, compared to $299 new, saving me $120 (or £88)
These savings weren’t as great as for the other products in this list, but I’m including it because refurbishment by original manufacturers is a trend that even sceptics of secondhand can get onboard with. More and more companies are refurbishing and reselling their own brand products or the products they also sell new. Why wouldn’t they? For them, it’s a new income stream. As we found at Green Alliance when we profiled Screwfix, which now sells a range of 1,800 refurbished lines for a discount, we learned that checks on refurbished equipment are often even more rigorous than those on new products (and that customer ratings are higher). The last time I was visiting family in the US, I treated myself to a pair of certified refurbished Bose buds, saving around 40 per cent of the cost of buying them new. I have confidence they will last longer than many headphones I’ve had, with the common frustration of having to recycle them before I should have. The manufacturer’s guarantee gives me peace of mind in case they don’t last.

4. A full set of Little Lamb reusable bamboo nappies were £65, compared to around £350 new or £1,040 for a lifetime’s supply of disposables, saving me as much as £975
This one was a double saving because reusable nappies are cheaper than disposables in any case and we managed to get a full set of 20 used reusable bamboo nappies from eBay. We had considered buying a lightly used set straight from Little Lamb, around £150 at the time, but it seems pre-loved bundles get snapped up quickly. Even if we had bought new reusables (still a circular solution), we would have saved something on the cost of buying disposable nappies. According to Little Lamb, opting not to use disposables could save a family £760 for their first child and even more for the second or third. Wider industry calculations suggest that, while the costs of both reusable and disposable nappies can vary widely depending on different factors, reusables are always cheaper. This is the case even when factoring in washing costs with higher than recommended temperatures (which we didn’t do). I’m glad those nappy days are behind me, but have never regretted that choice, both for our healthier bank balance and the lighter environmental impact.

5. A Paul & Joe dress bought from Vinted for £19, compared to £600 new (and possibly more), saving me at least £481
I have a track record of buying designer clothing from charity shops, including several finds so cheap they made me feel like I was stealing from a deserving cause. These include a Vivienne Westwood dress for £10 at an animal welfare charity shop where all the dresses, whether Primark or designer, were either £5 or £10, a Helmut Lang leather jacket from an HIV charity for £7.50 and a Lela Rose dress (a brand favoured by Kate Middleton) for £20. When I shop on Vinted, which I admit I do more than I should as it’s so easy, I don’t usually see such low prices. But a recent steal was a 100 per cent silk midi dress in perfect condition from the French fashion house Paul & Joe. I don’t know how much it would have been new, but their current prêt-à-porter offerings are £400 to £1,000, so I think my £600 guess could be low balling it. At a 97 per cent discount, I had to buy it. Didn’t I?

So, there you go, five valuable purchases that have saved me £3,500 together. And that’s just things I’ve bought. I’ve saved even more by renting useful products.

Recently, we needed an industrial strength cleaner to give the home we were leaving and the new home we were moving into the once over. I was never going to buy an industrial steam cleaner. They are massive, heavy and only rarely needed. The obvious answer was to rent. We ordered one online and picked it up from a local DIY shop. The RugDoctor we hired for £40 (to buy it new would be £749) was far better than the alternatives of either buying the lower quality one we could afford, but wouldn’t use much and would still have to store, or having to pay out for two lots of professional cleaning. We more than got our money’s worth.

With the cost of living crisis ongoing, it makes sense to help more people opt for reused, refurbished or rented. My experience shows it’s possible to go through life hardly buying anything new. But although these services are easier to access now, such businesses often have to operate on the margins, as the economy is still optimised for a linear model that takes resources, turns them into products and then discards them, sometimes very quickly, as waste. The government has promised a transformational plan to move the economy away from this expensive and wasteful model. It’s time the long delayed Circular Economy Growth Plan was lifted off the shelf and released into the world, so it can spread the love (and huge savings) of preloved.