Ending the throwaway culture: Insights from Ken Webster and Kyle Wiens

 What will it take to move from a throwaway culture to one where IT products are designed to last, be repaired, and reused? We spoke to two of the most influential voices in the circular economy — Ken Webster and Kyle Wiens — who say the answer lies in valuing longevity, embedding responsibility into product design, and changing how we see both waste and worth.

“We want to go from a linear economy to a circular one, because IT products are often produced in a linear way, which harms fragile ecosystems and depletes natural resources,” says Ken Webster, author and longtime circular economy thought leader. “But we don’t want to attach guilt to it.”

Each year, more than 60 million tonnes of e-waste are generated globally, yet the majority of these discarded products are not safely or effectively recycled. And even when they are, the process rarely preserves the original value of the materials.

“Most recycling deals with material which is horribly contaminated. By the time you’ve recycled it, you’ve lost all coherence to the object. It’s not a plastic bottle anymore — it’s a mashed-up piece of plastic,” says Ken Webster. “So it has to be reprocessed, which is often very expensive in energy terms and is very leaky in terms of materials.”

Client: TCO Development
Project Manager: Dennis Svärd
Production: Klapp.co

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