While Apple’s recycling robot represents an important recognition of the need to “close the loop” it is also a mascot for an unreal future still based on mindless buying and discarding with little regard for people and planet
Consumption
Tracing minerals and using our electronics ethically
Our mission is not just fixing, but connecting the dots between the way we use (and discard!) electronics, and the way they are produced. It is understanding – and intervening to reduce – their social and environmental impacts.
Material gifts, durability and our common future
This clickbait headline caught our attention: “Suck it, Hippies: Study Shows Material Gifts Can Bring Happiness”. But we need greater insight than a six-week psychology study.
Share your social network to unleash a global Restart
On Cyber Monday, and the beginning of climate talks in Paris, we want to give real, concrete actions for individuals to take to make a change. We need your help, and your social network reach.
Reframing “digital inclusion”
We would like to suggest much more reflection and critical engagement within our digital inclusion peers about an unquestioning, passive “consumption” model, not only of the hardware itself, but of software and the infrastructure that fuels the internet.
Why Europe fails to recycle e-waste and some solutions
Despite the best efforts of legislators, regulators and law enforcement, in Europe, we continue to dispose of e-waste in the most inefficient and dangerous ways. Right here, in our own back garden. The solution is citizen-centred.
A “bubble” stretching from provincial China to our high streets
While China increases capacity to manufacture ever more of the same kinds of products, is it stimulating internal consumption fast enough to compensate for our “meh” with the latest shiny gadget we are all supposed to buy?
Worn thin: the limits of a “logic of innovation”
People overwhelmingly value battery life over “thin”. Numerous studies have backed the idea that people want battery life more than any other “innovation”. So why do manufacturers seem to sideline this straight-forward desire in favour of “thin”?