CHICAGO — Donating furniture is known to have environmental benefits, including keeping bulky waste out of landfills. For people transitioning into permanent housing, these furnishings can also provide stability and a sense of home. New interdisciplinary research from the United States and Scotland reveals how furniture reuse has created rich social benefits that are often hidden or unsung. 

Siblings Alice Hague and Euan Hague teamed up after chatting on a bus ride home over the holidays. The ride was long, and as other topics ran out, conversation turned to work. They discovered both were studying furniture reuse. Their findings, “The Social Benefits of Furniture Reuse in the Circular Economy,” were recently published in the Journal of the Circular Economy. 

“I was expecting barriers to furniture reuse to be about policy and lack of funding,” said Alice Hague, senior environmental social scientist at The James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland. “I wasn’t expecting to hear about families from Ukraine being helped with furniture in a moment of crisis. There’s way more going on here than kilograms or tons of waste being avoided.” 

The teams in Chicago and Aberdeen conducted more than 50 interviews to gather insight into the benefits of providing used furniture to those in need — often after experiencing homelessness or domestic abuse. While the research had different starting points, they soon converged to reveal how the circular economy, which seeks to keep materials and products in circulation for as long as possible, works on a daily basis.  

“It was a challenge to bring together these independent thought processes, hinged around the same physical item – a piece of furniture,” said Euan Hague, a professor of geography and GIS at DePaul University in Chicago. “Alice stitched them together through the idea of the circular economy.” 

In Chicago, Hague’s DePaul graduate students, Laura Kohler and Kelby Bosma, conducted interviews with case managers who worked with the Chicago Furniture Bank and are co-authors on the study. DePaul’s work with the organization has spanned several years, including creating a map that charts where donated furniture is being used.

Stories emerged about families and refugees finding stability and a sense of home thanks to gently used couches, beds and tables. One mother told researchers her child’s grades went up in school because they “started sitting down at the dining room table versus sitting on the floor eating food.” A case manager in Chicago said this support “makes for an easier, more comfortable life for people who have already been through a significant trauma… until the furniture bank, to my knowledge, that was something that was kind of a blind spot.”

In Scotland, Alice Hague’s team focused on how the organizations keeping furniture in circulation are also providing jobs. Interviewers revealed that the organizations train employees in logistics, furniture removal, accounting and management. Co-authors from The James Hutton Institute on the study include Tami Wooldridge, Fiona Bender, Kathryn Colley, Phoebe Somervail and Tony Craig.  

“Many of us want to stop throwing out so much stuff,” Alice Hague said. “We wanted to go beyond the numbers by talking to people who are seeing the impact of reusing furniture.”

They found these organizations gave job opportunities to people who might struggle to engage with conventional employment. Many gain experience as they acquire, manage and distribute used furniture inventories.

In both Chicago and Scotland, nonprofits are driving the movement to keep furniture in circulation. While this is the first time the Hagues have worked together professionally, the collaboration is already sparking new ideas, including how thrift stores in the U.S. compare with those in Scotland. “There are all of these ways that we find similarities, just by being human beings, despite our different contexts,” Alice Hague said.

The full article is available at: https://doi.org/10.55845/joce-2026-41261