Rethink 101: Why our current way of consuming cannot and will not last

In 2020, something extraordinary happened. We're not talking about the weird virus that made us bake sourdough bread and learn to play the guitar in our locked-down houses. No, in 2020, the total weight of human made materials surpassed the total weight of all biological material on earth. Most of these are building materials, but also plastic and glass are omnipresent.

These materials are the backbone of our society. All things surrounding us – our homes, coffee machines, chairs, televisions, fashion and our children's toys – are so normal to us, we barely notice them anymore. But leave one out and our lives don't look the same.

Our material culture has become part of our identity. Who are you without your Levi's or Stanley cup? Owning a Samsung instead of an iPhone says something about you. Owning a design lamp or that IKEA lamp you tossed in the cart along with your cinnamon buns too.

Besides that, our material wealth gives us comfort. The smell coming from our coffee machine, our warm winter coat, a beautiful rug - the first thing our feet touch in the morning, and that massage gun that helps us relax. It's so darn comfortable. And that's why it's so hard to change. Even though we should…

As ubiquitous as they are, our materials are also problematic. About 60% of all plastic ever produced sits in landfills or floats in our oceans. Glass is extremely CO2-intensive to produce, even more than concrete. Climate change and diseases threaten the production of natural materials such as rubber. The rare metals in our electronics are getting rarer and mining them presents environmental and human rights challenges.

Our system of constant consumption is unsustainable. That's no news. We live in a linear economy that follows a take-make-dispose approach, creating massive waste problems, climate change and depleting resources. As populations grow and emerging economies mimic Western consumption patterns, environmental pressure intensifies. In fact, our very economy is based on growth: production and consumption must always grow, or things are "not going well".

On August 1, 2024, we hit Earth Overshoot Day, when we exhausted Earth's budget for the year in terms of resources used and CO₂ absorption.

The message is clear: it's impossible to maintain this forever.

If we want a sustainable future, we must rethink our relationship to materials. We need to move to a system where resources are reused, materials recovered, and waste minimized. Things should be designed to last, to be repaired and eventually, to be recycled and reused.

There's a responsibility - and a challenge - in this for designers and producers. But as consumers, we must shift our mindset too and choose those items that are designed to last, to be repaired and to be reused. So that materials are kept in circulation as long as possible.

We should collectively agree that more isn't better, and neither is new. Let's agree that owning the newest iPhone is uncool, and thrifting cool. And let's see interior trends as the expensive trap they are, while choosing durability makes sense. We should value experiences over possession and sustainability over short-term convenience.

The environmental crisis is not a distant problem. Its effects are here and now, and they are accelerating. By rethinking our material culture, we can address both our environmental challenges and our cultural ones. Let's create a society that values the things we already own, as well as the planet that makes them possible.

In part 2 of Rethink 101, we'll explore solutions to the recourse and ecological crisis, in the form of a bunch of R's: reduce, reuse, recycle. Or as some say: refuse, rethink, reduce, reuse, repair, refurbish, remanufacture, repurpose, recycle, recover.