21 JULY 2022
One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. Not really, says Adam Minter in his book, Secondhand: Travels in the new global garage sale.
Adam Minter grew up with junk.
In fact, it was a family business. A calling, even.
He spent his childhood exploring the family-owned junkyard in Minneapolis and going antique hunting with his grandmother at garage sales.
So, it’s unsurprising that Minter ended writing about junk – or rather, turning trash into useful things.
Minter, a veteran journalist who writes for Bloomberg Opinion, has written a number of articles on the subject, becoming something of an expert in the field. His book, Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade, lovingly details his adventures at the junkyard and the industry that revolves around it.
So, when Minter started writing Secondhand: Travels in the new global garage sale in 2015, it was with the idea that it’ll be a follow up of sorts to Junkyard Planet.
But the journey turned out quite different from expected.
Surprising findings
As he travelled around the world to places where used goods were collected, sorted and shipped out, he grew increasingly shocked by what he found.
Minter grew up with the philosophy that one would always be able to draw some value out of something that somebody else doesn’t want. But as he explored the world’s secondhand market — to countries such as the United States, Ghana and Japan — he discovered that while there was some truth to that, the industry is being overwhelmed by a deluge of used goods — much of it useless.
“What was emotionally and intellectually difficult for me was finding out that there is so much stuff out there that does not have value. And it doesn’t have value, in part, because there’s just so much of it. And so, that really did conflict with the message of what I found in Junkyard Planet,” he said.
Minter started writing the book with the hopeful goal of showing readers the wonderful ways things are being reused around the globe. But by the end of his reporting, he realized that his message was not going to be a simple, hopeful one.
“I realize that I didn’t have great solutions where I could tell people to just take their things to this place and it’ll be reused. You know, just do this very simple thing and the planet will be a more sustainable place.”
But if there’s one message one can glean from Secondhand, is that mankind’s consumption habits are excessive, resulting in an overflowing mountain of stuff that even the secondhand industry couldn’t handle.
For hundreds of years, people used and kept their goods — be it clothes or cutlery — for a long time, often mending and reusing it over time. But today, this habit is no longer the norm.
‘It’s cheaper to buy new rather than repair’ has become the mantra of the day.
“Stuff – the things we fill our homes and our offices with, has been getting cheaper since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century. It took over 200 years for that mass production to reach the level that it did in the 1980s where clothes could become disposable items and priced that way.”
But Minter isn’t quick to blame manufacturers.
“It’s the consumers who are demanding cheaper stuff. Everybody wants to say, ‘Oh, the manufacturers are doing this and that.’ Well, the manufacturers are responsive to consumers.”
Things can change if consumers start demanding for something different, said Minter. But unfortunately, consumers globally are primarily concerned with the cheapest product available.
“Price motivates everything. And that’s especially the case in developing economies,” he said.
De-stuffing
Writing this book has changed the way Minter and his family lives, and the change came almost immediately, he said.
His turning point came when he spent a week at Bookoff Corporation, the second largest Japanese company that handles used goods (they own Jalan Jalan Japan in Malaysia).
“I was taken to their used book warehouse in Yokohama. And when I saw this number of books they had, the majority of which will not be resold because they cannot be — they will be sent to a paper mill, that really hit me both as an author and as a book buyer,” he said.
“You can fool yourself into thinking that these books you have on your shelves are something special; that they are worth keeping, that somebody will want them. And you quickly find out in this warehouse that that’s not the case – that most of what you want, nobody wants.”
In the four years this project took, the Minter family changed their relationship with stuff.
His wife, Christine, an avid book collector since childhood, started selling off her books because she felt that there was no point in keeping them since Malaysia’s humid weather was so hard on books.
“She thought, ‘I better get rid of these — somebody else can enjoy them.”
While many people change their consumption habits due to environmental concerns, Minter was more concerned about the human aspects.
Realising that “nobody wants your stuff” has made Minter very careful when it came to buying things.
“At the back of our mind, when we buy things, especially valuable things, we always sort of assume that there will be an afterlife for it. But in many cases, there simply is not.”
“You see the scale of our consumption and how that consumption is too vast for the current system that we have.”
But is there light at the end of this disheartening tunnel?
Yes, only if people change their consumption habits — if they’re willing to buy high quality goods and to use them long-term, said Minter.
In the end, the secondhand industry cannot thrive without high quality goods.
Another issue to tackle is to make it easier for products to be repaired. Many manufacturers tend to make it difficult for consumers to repair their spoiled items.
“There’s a movement around the world called the right to repair movement that the electronics manufacturers are strongly opposed to,” he adds.
Minter explains that Malaysia is still at an economic level where people are willing to repair their items such as smartphones. But as Malaysia becomes more affluent, the desire to repair will go down.
Ultimately, change lies in the hands of the consumers.
They have to demand better from the manufacturers and they have to also change the way they consume.
The longer that you use the product, the lower its environmental impact, said Minter.
“So, if you buy a T-shirt that can last 100 washes instead of one that can only last five, that means you’re not buying as many T-shirts and you’re lowering the environmental impact.
“Spend more to spend less long term,” he said.
Malaysia, the secondhand hub
One of the surprising things Minter uncovered is that Malaysia is a global hub for secondhand goods.
“A lot of stuff comes to Malaysia, is sorted and then export out. And it’s been happening for decades,” he said.
For example, there are vast clothing warehouses in Malaysia where clothes from all over the world are sorted out and then delivered to different parts of the world such as Southern Asia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and even Africa.
One of the reasons why these items come to Malaysia instead of other countries is because Malaysia has a lot of experience with this industry and they have people who know how to sort through these things and the ports are friendly to the US stuff coming in, said Minter.
“So, in some sense, Malaysia has been very advanced in this, but most Malaysians don’t see it because it’s happening at the ports.”
However, in terms of using secondhand goods, Malaysia has a long way to go, though Minter things it will grow. For one, Malaysians are very interested in reusing a lot of Japanese secondhand goods.
“The key thing that has to happen now is that Malaysians need to start buying better stuff. And so that means maybe not buying that cheap, fast fashion items but actually going up the scale and buying a better quality item that can be resold,” he said.
This article was originally written for a Malaysian national daily. However, they never did publish it, which is a shame. I’ve published it here because Adam’s message deserves to be heard.
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Elizabeth Tai 