Sustaining Relationships Between People and Things

Fully functional products flood the world’s landfill sites. Colonies of outcast objects (including toasters that still toast and microwaves that still microwave) find their way into these underground clubs for unwanted objects. Waste of this nature proliferates the developed world, and may be understood as a symptom of a failed subject object relationship. This research paper argues that the deep origins of the ecological crisis we face are firmly situated within one simple yet profoundly universal inconsistency – the emotional demands of users constantly evolve, whilst the products assigned to satisfy those demands remain comparatively frozen in time. The mountains of waste generated by this single anomaly are apocalyptic, and come at a steadily rising cost to legislation-burdened manufacturers, and perhaps more crucially, the Natural World.