Secondhand shopping has always been one of the best ways to be fashionable and green at the same time.
In this increasingly environmentally conscious world (and one that’s climbing out of a recession), buying used is actually being on trend. ABC News reported that secondhand clothing sales are going up 35 percent a year, compared to regular retailers that only see gains of about 2 percent. Goodwill saw an 84 percent revenue increase in the sale of donated goods from 2007 to 2012, from $1.9 billion to $3.5 billion.
And as this recent Business Week article shows, it’s even become acceptable to buy used clothing in — gasp! — the luxury goods market.
Buying secondhand is undoubtedly cheaper and has a much smaller carbon footprint compared to newly manufactured items. So that got us wondering, what items are okay to buy pre-owned and what aren’t? Here’s a handy list, according to Business Insider.
Items you should always buy secondhand
Bicycles
Textbooks
Children’s clothing
Cars
Household appliances
Children’s toys
Office furniture
Wedding attire
Pets (meaning that you should check out the local pound or shelter)
Entertainment (DVDs, CDs, electronic games)
A house
Jewels
Designer threads
Items you should never buy secondhand
Bike helmets
Cribs
Laptops
Footwear
Cookware
Hats
Blenders
Upholstered furniture
Camera lenses
Mattresses and pillows
Swimsuits
Wet suits
Vacuum cleaners
Child car seats
Automobile tires
Computer software
Digital cameras
DON’T MISS: 6 Common Environmental Culprits That Need Regulation
Tag: Goodwill
What Do You Get When You Combine Those In Need of a Job with Local Food?
Most of us know Goodwill as a place to find affordable donated household products and clothing. But Goodwill Industries of Northern Michigan (GINM) has something edible up their sleeves.
It’s called Farm to Freezer, and since 2013, this initiative has been providing training and jobs for the unemployed, as well as frozen local food to the community. It’s pretty much a win-win-win: farmers are able to extend their growing season, unemployed or underemployed people gain food skills and the community has more healthy food options.
The process starts with GINM buying food — including asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, apples, strawberries, cherries, Kohlrabi, Romanesco broccoli and saskatoons — from local farms and growers. The produce is then taken to a communal kitchen where trainees process and freeze it using a blast freezer. Once frozen, it’s put into cold storage where it can be sold to retail outlets, restaurants and industrial buyers. Currently, Farm to Freezer works with 16 farms (a jump from just four last year) and sells its product at 19 retail locations and nine school districts.
Participants of the GINM training program include those living in the Goodwill Inn homeless shelter and people recovering from addiction treatment. This year, the program has 21 trainees, some of whom have already found jobs through Farm to Freezer or are currently working with the organization, an increase from last year’s group of 15.
Mark Coe was working at Calvin Lutz Farm in Kavlevo, Mich. when the idea struck him that Goodwill should add local food to its repertoire. Now, he’s head of Farm to Freezer. “Farm to Freezer is a stepping stone to gainful employment,” Coe tells Sustainable Cities Collective. “We start with a ServSafe training class. It is a two-week program and when the trainees finish the class they have the opportunity to come into Farm To Freezer as an apprentice to learn the processing and freezing of locally purchased fruits and vegetables.”
With that, Goodwill is showing that it has an adept green thumb at growing not just produce, but jobs, too.
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When Communication Barriers Prevented Coworkers from Talking, Goodwill Provided Language Lessons for All
Back in 2006, when Rafael Toquinto, Jr. started working at a warehouse in Denver where Goodwill Industries sorts unsold clothing and household goods for recycling, his coworkers wouldn’t even say hello to him.
The snub wasn’t on purpose. His fellow employees simply didn’t know how to greet him in a way he’d understand.
Why? Because Toquinto, Jr. is deaf.
But now, he and the 16 other deaf Goodwill employees can enjoy some water cooler chatter with their coworkers — thanks to a free class the nonprofit is offering all employees.
Nicki Cantin, a recycling operations assistant who oversees the warehouse where Toquinto works as a certified forklift driver, said that managers were worried that if there was an emergency, they wouldn’t be able to alert deaf employees about it. “We’re supposed to be working as a team, but we couldn’t even talk to each other,” Cantin told Thad Moore of the Denver Post.
For the past two months, warehouse workers have met twice a week for an American Sign Language class taught by Cathy Noble-Hornsby, deaf services program manager for Goodwill Industries of Denver. Toquinto and other hearing-impaired employees work together with their coworkers, helping to teach them sign language and correcting their hand positions. They also demonstrate a sign when a coworkers finger spells what they want to say.
“We’re not outsiders anymore,” Toquinto told Moore.
Toquinto even makes sure his coworkers practice. When they interact with him on the job and lapse into writing what they want to say to him on paper, “I’ll go, ‘OK, enough writing now,'” Toquinto said. “Now come into my world.”
Toquinto trained a new deaf coworker, Josue Candelaria-Facio, on the ins and outs of the warehouse, such as where everything goes — something that Toquinto struggled to learn in the days before all the coworkers could communicate. “I really feel kind of proud that they’re willing to learn my language,” Candelaria-Facio told Moore. “It’s really nice — even on that basic level — to be able to communicate.”
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He Dropped Out of High School 30 Years Ago, But This Innovative Education Center Helped Him Earn a Diploma
Montaque Quentrel Koonce of Indianapolis dropped out of high school at age 16. Years later, when he was laid-off from his job on an assembly line, he struggled to find an affordable place to live. That’s when he turned to the Excel Center, a Goodwill-sponsored charter school that offers the city’s 150,000 dropouts a chance to earn a high school degree and college credit. Koonce told April Brown of the PBS NewsHour there were “two things [he’s] terrified of,” becoming homeless, and “having to do math. So I had to confront both of those fears at the same time.” Koonce overcame his fears, graduating with a high school degree more than thirty years after he dropped out.
Goodwill is mostly known for its thrift stores, whose sales fund job training and programs for a variety of needy people. But although Goodwill hadn’t previously been involved in education, representatives of the City of Indianapolis’ mayor’s office approached Goodwill of Central Indiana about starting a program to help the city’s dropouts who’d been severely affected by the recession. (In Indianapolis, the mayor’s office is able to sponsor state charter schools.)
Jim McClelland, CEO and President of Goodwill of Central Indiana, decided its education centers would offer dropouts the opportunity to earn high school degrees rather than G.E.D.s, because according to research, those with G.E.D.s fare little better in terms of job opportunities and money-earning potential than dropouts do. The Excel Center also offers college credit and classes that prepare students to earn technical certifications.
The Excel Center now enrolls 3,000 adults at nine different locations in Indiana, where the teachers hold them to high standards. Kandas Boozer, an algebra teacher for Excel, told Brown, “I expect them to always give 100 percent no matter what that looks like. Everybody is at a different level, so I just want to make sure they give me everything they have.” People like Koonce are getting a lot in return.