Development of a Used Item Exchange System for Waste Reduction and Sustainability

Abstract

Municipal solid-waste management in Malaysia remains strongly dependent on collection and disposal, creating pressure on landfill capacity and contributing to greenhouse-gas emissions. This study developed and evaluated the Exchange Used Item System (eXIm), a zero-money web platform designed to reduce unnecessary new purchases and redistribute reusable household goods before they enter recycling or disposal streams. Grounded in the waste hierarchy and circular-economy principles, the project used a mixed-method requirements approach and iterative Agile development to translate user concerns about usefulness, ease of use, trust, safety, Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistance, and logistics convenience into a functional Malaysian peer-to-peer reuse ecosystem. The full-stack platform was implemented with Next.js and MongoDB and evaluated through functional testing, black-box testing, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), and automated software-quality verification. All 18 documented functional modules achieved their expected outcomes, all 21 black-box scenarios passed, and all 12 UAT tasks were accepted. In addition, 16 automated tests across five test files passed, while linting, static type checking, and the production build completed successfully. The findings demonstrate the technical and operational feasibility of combining structured exchange workflows, assistive AI, trust mechanisms, and optional logistics within a strictly non-monetary platform. eXIm provides a practical model for household financial sustainability and early intervention in the waste hierarchy, although longitudinal research is required to quantify actual expenditure substitution and landfill diversion.