When did disposable become our default?

Maybe the problem isn’t what we’re buying. Maybe it’s what we stopped valuing.

About a week ago, in my tiny room of ideas, AKA my shower, an old L.L. Bean commercial came to mind. I saw this commercial probably 10 years ago, but the premise stayed with me. I think this came up because I’m preparing to launch a couple of programs that encompass wealth, values, beliefs and motivations.

But I digress. Back to the commercial.

The commercial asked these questions: “When did we stop valuing things that get better over time?” and “When did disposable become our default?”

Those questions have stuck with me.

The commercial reminded me of a time when I was living in a townhouse and I asked my landlord to take a look at my dishwasher. It was probably the third time the maintenance guy came to see what he could do. His conclusion? We’ll have to replace it. Really? Over a little sensor? He said it was cheaper to throw the dishwasher away than continue to find the sensor. He said the dishwasher wasn’t made to last more than 3 years or so.

Ok, so let me get this straight. It’s cheaper to put an appliance that costs $350 in a landfill than build it well enough for it to be repaired and last for a longer period of time. Yikes!

This is when I realized that the “disposable” dishwasher wasn’t the real problem. The cost of repair exceeded the economic value of repairing it.

Not because it couldn’t function. Not because it was beyond repair. But because repairing it no longer made rational sense. It still had life left and yet it was considered no longer worth the investment.

I wonder where else disposable shows up.

Being disposable is a product category. But what if disposable has become a philosophy-a way we think about our lives?

Friendships need tending.

Communities don’t become strong because we happen to live near one another. They become strong because we decided they are worth the time, energy and money to invest in. The same is true of almost anything we hope will endure.

Durability requires investment.

What makes something worth investing in? Value.

What determines that value? Our beliefs. Our beliefs influence what we recognize as valuable.

What happens when our beliefs about that value change? The exact thing that happened to the dishwasher. It hadn’t stopped functioning. Its economic value had changed.

We have become increasingly comfortable allowing economic value to become a proxy for worth.

Wait a minute. What if this isn’t about dishwashers or anything else we can buy?

Maybe that’s what bothers me most about a culture of disposability. It isn’t simply that we’re buying too much stuff. It’s that we may be losing our capacity to recognize what is valuable and worth keeping.

The L.L. Bean commercial asked, “When did disposable become our default?”

I don’t know when it did.

What have we decided is no longer worth preserving? And what might change if we chose differently? Repair what is broken. Tend what is living. Invest in what you believe matters. Steward what was never solely ours to consume.