Book: Made To Break

From the days of colonization to the President's urging us to "go shopping" after September 11, newness--and disposability--have been a deep part of American living. Canadian cultural historian Giles Slade wrote Made to Break, a history of this way of life. Elizabeth Grossman, who recently wrote High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxins, and Human Health, has written a piece for Grist about it.

In the United States, where we still cling to the myth of the endless frontier and equate progress and prosperity with the ability to jettison things, the notions of reuse and recycle have been slow to take hold. The idea of designing a product with the end of its life and impacts of its production in mind is still novel, and American businesses tend to regard the idea of producer responsibility -- which holds the manufacturer responsible for a product at the end of its useful life -- as a threat to profit margins. But in other parts of the world, governments and manufacturers are confronting the costs of disposability at long last.

"During the next few years, the overwhelming problem of waste of all kinds will, I believe, compel American manufacturers to modify industrial practices that feed upon a throwaway ethic," Slade writes. "The golden age of obsolescence -- the heyday of nylons, tailfins, and transistor radios -- will go the way of the buffalo."

That's refreshing. Let's hope so.

(I recently wrote a post for Treehugger about a survey meant to measure the awareness of e-waste in different countries. The survey is far from perfect but it gives an interesting insight at least into how people around the world are waking up to the growing problem of often toxic computer waste.)