Secondhand Categories in Portugal: What the Available Data Shows

Munara does not yet have enough usage data to rank what its community gives away. Available published research does not provide a ranking of donated item categories in Portugal either. Savers' 2024 Thrift Report surveyed secondhand shoppers in the U.S. and Canada about what they bought; it is context about shopping, not evidence about donations or Portuguese behavior. Portuguese textile-recovery data describes clothing collection and its destinations, but it cannot rank all donated items.

Portuguese textile data describes clothing recovery

Humana Portugal's 2022 results report that 19% of collected pieces were reused in its Portuguese shops, 40% found customers in the global market, 33% went to recycling, and 8% were treated as waste. These figures describe Humana's collected textiles in 2022, not all clothing donations in Portugal. They are one dated snapshot, not a current national average. Humana's more recent reporting uses different figures and categories, so results should be tied to their year and source.

Offering a wearable item directly to someone nearby is one possible reuse route alongside collection schemes.

A North American survey reports secondhand purchases

In Savers' 2024 Thrift Report, a survey of consumers in the U.S. and Canada, respondents reported buying secondhand books (46%), furniture (34%), home décor (33%), electronics (29%), and housewares or kitchenware (28%). These are purchase figures, not donation rates, and cannot be used to infer what people in Portugal donate. Furniture and books are worth considering individually because their environmental profiles differ.

Furniture carries an outsized environmental footprint relative to its donation volume. A secondhand sofa has been estimated at roughly 10 kg CO₂e versus around 100 kg CO₂e for a new one — a 90% reduction, because the bulk of a piece of furniture's emissions come from manufacturing and materials, not from sitting in a living room. A single donated sofa or wardrobe genuinely keeps a meaningful chunk of embodied carbon out of the "replace it" cycle.

Books, by contrast, have a modest individual footprint but an unusually long useful life — a donated book routinely passes through several owners before it's recycled, and Portuguese students spend a real amount each year on required reading, so a well-stocked secondhand shelf has direct household budget impact as well as an environmental one.

Electronics are a smaller share, but the stakes are higher

Electronics featured in Savers' North American secondhand purchase survey (29% of respondents), but that does not tell us their share of donations in Portugal. E-waste deserves attention because improper handling can cause harm and prevents reuse. A working phone, laptop, or tablet may be useful to someone else, though we do not have Munara data to measure how often donated devices displace a new purchase.

What this means if you're deciding what to donate

These sources do not tell us which items are donated most in Portugal. They offer narrower context: Humana's figures describe textile recovery in its network, while Savers' survey describes secondhand purchases in the U.S. and Canada. Functional items can stay in use when they reach someone who needs them, and local donation data could help answer the Portugal-specific question in the future.

Once Munara has real usage data of its own, this is exactly the kind of pattern we'll be able to check against an actual local community rather than published industry averages — and we'll publish that data the same way, honestly and with sources, when it exists.

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Wondering what to do with a specific item sitting in your hallway right now? Browse the categories on Munara and see what's already being listed nearby.