Revive and Restore: Combating Waste in Our Throwaway Society

Sandra Goldmark, a theatre set designer and university professor, embarked on a mission to challenge our throwaway culture. Her journey began when her toaster, desk lamp, and vacuum cleaner all broke down simultaneously. Frustrated by the lack of repair services, she realized that our cheap consumption culture was contributing to an unsustainable waste problem.

The Problem with Our Throwaway Culture

In her book, Fixation: How to Have Stuff Without Breaking the Planet, Sandra recalls her frustration: “Amazon beckoned. But I didn’t want to get a new vacuum – I wanted the old one to work.” This sentiment resonates with many of us. A 2016 study by Nottingham Trent University found that 45% of people cannot name a repair service they trust.

Sandra’s realization went beyond her personal inconvenience. She thought about the broader implications of our throwaway culture: “I thought about how the vacuum and desk lamp and backpack and toaster are part of a much bigger economic system of large-scale extraction of resources, poor design, rapid manufacture, global distribution, early obsolescence, and disposal.”

Every year, discarded objects contribute to 127 million tonnes of landfill in the US alone. In New Zealand, around 2.5 million tonnes of waste end up in landfill each year – that’s over a tonne of rubbish per household.

The Pop-Up Repair Shop

Sandra decided to take action. For seven years, she and her husband, Michael, ran a pop-up repair shop in New York. With the help of YouTube videos, a small team of amateur tinkerers, and Sandra’s experience as a set designer, they fixed 2500 objects. Through this process, they identified the repeat offenders and worst culprits in our throwaway culture.

“Printers were a constant source of frustration and failure to the point that we stopped accepting them,” Sandra says. “If a part was failing, it was impossible to get a replacement.” They soon stopped repairing digital products too, with an iPad being the final straw.

Planned Obsolescence

Making parts unavailable is characteristic of the manufacturing culture of intentional obsolescence. Companies deliberately design products to have a limited lifespan, ensuring consumers regularly buy new ones. For digital products, companies use subtle ways to make things redundant quickly, such as software that slows down after updates, batteries that can’t be replaced, and screens that are glued on.

One of the most common impediments to repair is proprietary screws, designed by companies to make them impossible to remove without a specialist screwdriver. However, Sandra also discovered that some companies were better than others at making repairable products.

The Economics of Repair

Sandra cites the case of the Centennial Light, a light bulb manufactured in 1901 that is still burning more than a century later. She explains how durability has been lost in the era of globalization: “The economics of repair used to be very different. Fifty years ago, when more items were made in the same country where they might be fixed, the relative labor costs were not so disparate.”

Solutions for a Sustainable Future

The solution, according to Sandra, is to adopt international labor standards to stop the corporate race to the bottom, improve quality, and make repair a more viable option. She suggests governments should give tax breaks to repair providers, as they do in Sweden. She envisions a circular economy where big-box stores like Walmart have repair and reuse shops.

One of the curious things Sandra learned from her years of repairing was that most of her customers were willing to pay close to or equal to the original price of the object, not for environmental reasons, but out of emotional attachment to an item. This phenomenon represents a willingness to spend money on repair, service, and upgrade.

There are signs of change. Ikea launched a buy-back and resell scheme in the UK, and British department store Selfridges announced the launch of a repair and resell service. The corporate world is also getting on board, with Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, raising $900 million in a year for its first circular economy fund.

Conclusion

Sandra Goldmark’s journey highlights the importance of challenging our throwaway culture. By promoting repair and reuse, we can reduce waste, conserve resources, and create a more sustainable future. It’s time to revive and restore, not just for our wallets, but for our planet.