'Treasure' hunt

Growing industry

The lifestyle of "stooping" also relates to recycling and sustainable development.

The social media platform Xiaohongshu released its 2023 "life-trends" report in December. The number of notes related to the circulation of idle goods in 2022 increased by 814 percent year-on-year, a major trend. Instead of buying useless things, people are shifting to secondhand goods and replacing underused or unused objects.

According to the 2021 China Idle Goods Trade Carbon Emission Reduction Report, jointly issued by Tsinghua University and other institutions, trading in idle goods covers almost all kinds of consumer goods, and the market size is estimated to reach 3 trillion yuan ($443 billion) by 2025.

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