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I was confronted the other day by this image of a prosthetic seat for a broken chair. It made me think about all the broken things I’d tossed out or seen tossed out over the years and what a waste that was. Waste is a real concern of mine lately, both from a design ethics standpoint and an economic one.

Most consumer goods today are so cheap that repairing them hardly seems worth it. Things move so fast that there is inevitably something new and improved to replace it. The new thing is bound to be cheaply made, as well. The cycle repeats itself.

In a way, I suppose, these broken things help fuel the economic engine. People keep buying replacements and designers keep making them. This is, of course, terrible because it’s a tremendous waste of resources.

Shine it Up

As an idealist, I want to suggest that people stop buying cheap things; invest in a well-made chair and it will pay for itself by outlasting three poorly-made ones. I might also propose that people try to fix things instead of buying new ones.

“Shine that up and put $7.50 on it… Shame to let a good toaster go to waste over a frayed cord”
- Proposition Joe, The Wire

But, realistically, most people can’t save up for something nice. They buy what they can when they need it. As for fixing things, repair stores (like ol’ Prop Joe’s) aren’t that common anymore. Moreover, the complex electronic devices we surround ourselves with these days, which seem particularly failure-prone, are often beyond the DIY threshold. So what can be done?

If things get bad enough with the economy, maybe our consumer culture will change on its own. But we really can’t count on that, nor do we want it happen that way. Designers change minds by making. Which is why, in our predicament, I believe the prosthetic represents an interesting option.

In the example of the chair, the act of replacing the seat with a prosthetic is not quite a repair. It doesn’t return the chair to its previous state—it makes it a different, maybe better, chair. This might be a solution, or perhaps a foothold, towards addressing the problem of so much broken stuff.

The cost of producing the seat is (hopefully!) less than that of a new chair and it satisfies the consumer’s desire for something new. The prosthetic is an easy enough fix that anyone can do it. The gesture might make people start to reconsider their consumption patterns.

I realize the irony of consuming our way out of consuming, but if we can change what people buy and what people throw away, it might be enough to make a difference.

It’s probably much trickier with electronics, but I think it’s doable. Why should we have to throw anything away and spend so much to replace things, when a little design can give them new life?