Internet of Second Hand Things: Object biographies, consumption pathways and re-valuing goods.

Adopting more sustainable patterns of consumption offers positive outcomes for improving personal wellbeing, minimising resource depletion and meeting environmental targets. However, changing consumption patterns is hard to achieve because our acquisition, use and disposal of material objects forms a central part of the cultural practices that give meaning to our lives. Our proposed research will explore how the associating of material objects, across an 'internet of things', with user-generated content can positively influence donors, shoppers, volunteers/staff and recipients of both goods and aid. The aim is not simply to provide people within the network of second hand goods with more information, but rather to foster new cultural practices with a view of instigating behavioural change around shoppers' valuation of goods leading to increased sustainability and new economic models within complex patterns of consumption.

Our project will build on a prior pilot study conducted in partnership with Oxfam that adopted technology from the EPSRC Digital Economy TOTeM project. Smart phones and QR codes were configured to enable stories to be added to donated items. Stories and messages attached to secondhand goods could then be read by shoppers. Using the 'Shelflife' App to add stories added to their social and business value, resulting in donated items living on beyond their expected product cycles. Promoting sustainable living is one of Oxfam's core objectives and the pilot demonstrated that adding stories to secondhand items increased the worth, longevity and reduced the disposability of donated items. Tackling the levels of consumption has is now be identified as the primary challenged posed by population growth. The Royal Society report People and the Planet (2012) highlights the increase in global population by a further two billion people over the next 20 years, and refocuses the key question from How many people? to How are they all going to live? The report concludes that in developed and the emerging economies, consumption has reached unsustainable levels and must be immediately reduced. The report claims that the increase in population will, '...entail scaling back or radical transformation of damaging material consumption and emissions and the adoption of sustainable technologies. This change is critical to ensuring a sustainable future for all'.

Whilst internationally recognised for articulating the potential for a social dimension to an Internet of Things, the Shelflife product was not tailored to the complex chains of interactions in which second hand goods flow between donors, vendors, shoppers, recipients of the goods and the aid that the sale of the goods generates. Making visible the complexity of these value chains and developing appropriate interventions so that the parties within them retain connection, is a critical step in developing more sustainable methods of consumption. Through better understanding the second hand context and developing interventions that expose its conditions we can maximise its sustainable effectiveness and extend its applicability to other business arenas.

The proposed project benefits from being already closely associated with the Oxfam team. The primary impact objective for the collaboration is simple - to increase public donations to Oxfam via shops or clothing banks. In order to do this both Oxfam and the academic team expect to explore creative / technical opportunities for developing donating. The secondary impact objectives are to develop support for other forms of second-hand goods consumption. The project will thus involve a number of other institutions specialising in the secondhand.

While the project has an established partner in Oxfam, it will also require the involvement of volunteers, donators and high street shoppers. Recruiting and retaining these users will require a varied set of strategies. The project's team benefits from experience in parallel domains of recruitment and retention with community members (e.g. suburban residents, café customers etc.) Given the project is committed to increasing the value to various communities of secondhand objects, the pathways to impact will be informed by consumption studies an approach which casts a wider net of value than the economic alone.

The combination of Intellectual Contributions, the Open Software Platform, Experiments and Public Engagement that will be documented and reported through the weblog and project site will strengthen our story and offer tangible opportunities for industry. Vitally, we will also pursue opportunities to contribute evidence and anecdotes from IoST in policy-making forums where evidence can be communicated in a politically expedient way. The project team are confident that with a robust technological infrastructure coupled with exciting and engaging examples of its use, charity and retail partners will be attracted to use IoST.

The project team has already identified specific points of Intellectual Property that will be unique to the UK, and will be attractive to organisations and companies worldwide. A formal collaboration agreement will be drawn up for each of the partners. Outputs having potential specific impacts will be identified by the partners involved in each WP. Prior intellectual property (IP) will remain with the original owner, while new IP developed in collaboration will be shared equitably between the partners responsible for its development. Research outputs will be protected and exploited according to the standard processes already in place in each of the partner universities, all of whom have dedicated Research and Innovation support staff to ensure this.