Throwaway Society: New Thinking, Old Words?

Professor Jonathan Woodham was one of five international speakers drawn from different academic traditions and backgrounds who were invited to address the EPSRC Seminar on The Throwaway Society: Origins, Causes and Consequences held under the auspices of the Centre for Sustainable Consumption at Sheffield Hallam University on March 18, 2008. This was the concluding event of the latter’s EPSRC-funded Network on Product Lifespans (2004-08) aimed at manufacturers, retailers, designers, marketing managers, researchers, sustainability experts, and public policy specialists with an interest in consumer or environmental policy. The seminar was also conceived as a launchpad for a series of new initiatives germinated by the Network.

Woodham’s presentation, entitled “Throwaway Society: New Thinking, Old Words?” provided an overview of the ways in which designers have reacted to planned obsolescence over the years, framed within an evaluation of the extent to which they have been culpable in our throwaway culture. The terms “throw-away” and “disposable” are emphatically twentieth century words, the first gaining currency in 1920s before its later application as a metaphor for twentieth century society, the latter as a characteristic of nappies in the 1940s before its widespread application to a wider range of products in the 1960s. The word “designer” has a considerably longer pedigree with roots in the sixteenth century although, arguably, in the ways in which we commonly understand it today, it did not emerge as a fully-fledged profession until the twentieth century, despite the emergence of industrialisation and the growth of the city throughout the 1800s.

Despite more than two centuries of industrialisation there has been a long history of eloquent, evocative and critical writing that has been critical of its apparent consequences. This was traced from the writings of 19th century design reformers and the growing tensions between industrialisation, social and moral responsibility and the dictates of consumerism. Also considered were notions of consumer engineering that emerged in 1930s USA alongside the emergence of behavioural psychology and motivational research as counterpoints to the ascendancy of the industrial design profession, the 1950s American Dream and a widespread international commitment to a world of materialist obsolescence. The ways in which such ideas were satirised by Jacques Tati in his film Mon Oncle (1958) or by Tony Hancock and Sid James in the 1960 TV episode of The Babysitters were considered alongside the writings of Vance Packard, the Ken Garland-led First Things First Manifesto of 1964, the moral outlook of Victor Papanek and the fundamentally more significant premises that underpinned the philosophy of designer Giu Bonsiepe whose concerns were centred on design in and by developing countries. Woodham examined moments of designers’ self-reflection, even anger, about design in the wider world such as the major international 1976 Design for Need: the Social Contribution Conference and Exhibition organised by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) and held at the Royal College of Art. He argued that despite the later emergence of green design in its various shades in the 1980s and 1990s, the often fierce debates of the Design for Need conference made little real impact on design practice in the industrial world and were swallowed up in the design for profit ethos of Thatcher and Regan and the vagaries of the postmodern object. He concluded with consideration of the implications of the issues raised in the early 21st century by Bruce Mau’s collaborative Massive Change in Action initiative supported by Bruce Mau Design, the Institute without Boundaries and the Canadian Heritage Information Network.

The other speakers at the Sheffield EPSRC Seminar were economics expert Professor Michael Waldman of the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, USA, who analyzed some of the market influences on planned obsolescence; sustainable design researcher Nicole van Nes, whose PhD at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, investigated product lifetimes, and who explored the reasons why consumers feel under pressure to replace functional products; Dr. Nicki Souter, Campaign Manager for Waste Aware Scotland, who discussed proposals in the Scottish Waste Reduction Plan for better consumer information on the expected life span of household products, product guarantees and availability of spare parts. The final speaker was Dr. Tim Cooper, Head of the Centre for Sustainable Consumption at Sheffield Hallam University, who summarized and assessed recent developments in policy and research relating to product life spans.