How 2025 Could Become The Year of Reuse

Every time I would visit India growing up, one sight would fascinate me as we traveled the roads was the number of old Ambassador black taxis that continued to dominate the roads for five decades. The thing I didn't know as a child but later learned was that the "secret" to their longevity was that the insides of the cars would be completely replaced over time. While the iconic car brand has since been discontinued, I couldn't help thinking about it this week as a read about a luxury service designed to do something similar for Porsche 911 cars.

By itself, this is an intriguing service - but it's also an example of a broader trend that will be one to watch in 2025: reuse and upcycling. There are examples of this happening in many industries across the world.

Leading architecture firm Gensler predicts a boom in "adaptive reuse" becoming one of the hottest trends in building this year leading to "creative conversions of aging buildings as economic and environmental imperatives ... office to office, office to clinic, retail to sports and entertainment, retail to health and wellness."

More than a dozen leading brands across fashion, furniture and shoes have launched their own branded buyback programs encouraging their customers to resell products back to them for resale in exchange for credit to use later. Some industry watchers in fashion are expecting that upcycling clothes in this way could be the sustainable fashion trend of 2025.

Even technology products, perhaps the most notorious category for generating frequent waste thanks to how quickly products become dated, is now increasingly sharing ideas for upcycling technology products by reusing them and even FINALLY allowing people to open and fix their own malfunctioning devices thanks to the recent "right to repair" legislation that was implemented in 2023.

All this is a hopeful message to start the new year. If 2025 does indeed become the year where reuse takes off, we will all benefit by both saving money and positively impacting the environment by reducing waste as well.