BBC Worldwide announces today an affiliate partnership agreement for its recently launched BBCGreen.com portal. Offering consumers the opportunity to buy 'used only' goods from eBay as an everyday way to recycle and reduce unnecessary waste and the embedded energy of buying new products, under the agreement the site will run adverts.

Launched on March 11th, BBC Green, is a lifestyle portal offering consumers tips to combat climate change and advice from some of the UK's leading environmental experts. During the development process the editorial team worked with the Stockholm Environment Institute to build the unique 'Action Plan' tool at the heart of the site. The tool rates all the practical changes users can make to live more environmentally friendly by emissions, cost and difficulty and it also allows users to customize the plan to select lifestyle changes that suit their daily life and budget.

A surprising result of the research was that 'buying and selling second hand' is among the top 20 things a consumer can do to reduce CO2 emissions due to the energy needed to manufacture, package and transport new goods. Buying and selling second hand can be just as effective in terms of reducing personal emissions as driving a more efficient or electric car, paper and plastic recycling or cavity wall insulation. A popular and important change to make however is installing low energy light bulbs, cutting down your consumption of new products by 20% could offer three times the CO2 savings.

BBCGreen.com aims not only to help the public understand the issues and the context of their actions but also importantly to inspire and make taking action in their everyday life as easy as possible. The eBay agreement is a perfect example of a practical yet impactful change. eBay, with 20 million registered users in the UK alone and over 10 million items for sale at any one time, is playing an important role in encouraging people to buy and resell their unwanted items and help the environment at the same time.

Of the millions of items for sale on eBay many lend themselves to be reused especially items such as text books or baby clothes which are often only needed once. Some, such as antiques, furniture and memorabilia can actually improve over time. To buy used items from eBay simply choose 'used items only' in the 'item condition' tab of the search options.