For a long while, I’d been picturing a society that handled reuse the way I do IRL - if you have a thing, you make it last as long as possible, fix it if you can, and when it’s finally worn out you find another use for it (even if just as component parts). I’d imagined the transfer of usable items would be handled informally, through community networks or something similar to Everything is Free/Buy Nothing groups IRL.
But conversations awhile back got me imagining a bigger, community/societal-level focus on reuse. Perhaps a society where most people’s first source for some household items or appliances or furniture would be some kind of community stockpile. I imagine warehouses where items are sorted and tested, fixed, and perhaps broken down to components for other repairs. Where they’re catalogued and posted to some kind of library- or eBay-like website. I imagine community drop off and collection points, where someone who’s downsizing might bring extra appliances, and young folks just starting out might pick their first furniture. I picture a separate refuse stream for things that are still good or could be fixed, emphasizing that there’s a difference between something you don’t need anymore, and something nobody needs (actual garbage). I could even see work crews combing through long-abandoned houses, hauling out items to put back into circulation, before disassembling the building, Habitat For Humanity -style, to use the lumber and counters and cabinets etc elsewhere.
I don’t think this would be the only source of stuff, probably not even the primary one. If you want fancy furniture I figure you’d go to a local workshop and see what they’ve got, or commission something from an open-source design. But I could see this system of reuse taking the place of something like Walmart or IKEA. Sort of your default for cheap stuff (I’m weak on economic theory; I’d love a society where it’s all free, but I don’t know enough to describe that with confidence. Hopefully it’d at least be a government org, or a worker run nonprofit type thing where all profits go to the workers and continuing operation?). I like the idea of a society with an institutional focus on reuse rather than extraction and disposal.
Normally I don’t start off with a whole chunk of world building like that, but I’m planning some photobash scenes around these ideas, and I’d love to work out some of the questions and discussions about logistics before I’ve made the things and done something wrong.
The first question I had was around collection of these items. I’d been imagining some kind of vehicle operating a bit like a garbage truck, making rounds through various neighborhoods collecting the things people don’t want, but less frequently and with a slower pace because they have to be more careful with the stuff they pick up and have to make more trips back to the depot. I’d love to do a streetcar or something other than a generic box truck, but I think a truck makes the most sense. Streetcars were occasionally used to deliver the mail, but I’ve found no examples of them even being used as garbage trucks, which might be able to maintain a pace that wouldn’t disrupt everything else on the line. Depending on the level of service offered, they could need a lot of flexibility - do they pick up just from community drop off points, or from the curb outside people’s homes, or do they assist with moving things out of homes for those who are elderly or disabled? Maybe different levels of service for different circumstances?
I hope people would do their best to re-home items directly using the future equivalent of EIF or Buy Nothing, but it’d be nice if there was an option besides the landfill for items that don’t generate interest in their immediate community, or where the person just wants it gone with the convenience of throwing it out. I feel like this could help with that.
Then there’s the question of how do you get bulky items home in a society where almost no one drives? IKEA and Walmart design a lot of their products to fit, flat-packed, into your sedan or hatchback. And they offer delivery. This society would be handling a lot of already built items and have a lower reliance on personal cars. Maybe most street cars would let you lug a dresser onboard if they’re not crowded? I’ve certainly done similar with the local trains, though the guy at the turnstile wasn’t paying attention and probably would have stopped us. Maybe you’d use a cargo bike and trailer? Maybe you just have to hire a delivery service for big things? Is it abelist if the small storefront-style drop-off/pickup sites first answer is to hand you a push cart with your bulky item and send you down the street with it?
Do you have any thoughts on the idea of reuse at this scale?
You’re picturing a library economy. Large items will be delivered by trike taxi or truck. I’m releasing a novel featuring this next month.
Good to have a better name for it. Any aspects of it you’d like to see see in a picture? Or any details you think I should include in the scenes I’m planning? I’d like to do one of a warehouse/workshop, one of items being picked up, though I’m much less certain on details for that one so far, and perhaps one of an abandoned house or McMansion (an impractical distance from the more centralized, less-car-based society) being disassembled for parts, items being carried out and packed up for reuse. You’ve probably thought about the logistics further than I have - anything in particular to get right, or any additional scenes to show?
I like the idea of a truck both delivering and picking up items. People would follow it to return items, and it would drive slow enough to enable this. I also like volunteer bicyclists delivering items while exercising.
A tiny step in this direction is just making this stuff available to others, whether that is online or even in a box near your front door if you live in a city.
100%! IRL I’m super active on my local Everything is Free page. In addition to giving regular stuff away, I fix up furniture I find on trash day, and computers and electronics from ewaste, and give them away on there. I posted a couple furniture projects over on /c/zerowaste, and am currently trying to hand off a mid century desk, and working on a park bench and a pair of bar stools. I’ve also made some progress convincing my relatives that there’s a different between garbage and just stuff they don’t want - a bunch of them have started setting stuff aside until I can collect it, and my SO has actually made similar progress at her work, where her coworkers have made sure working unwanted stuff gets diverted to her to pass on to our community
I think a nice story element would be how young people personalize the by necessity somewhat boring standardized and modular components of something. This transports how modular stuff enables easy repair and reuse, but also how that can stifle creativity and innovation and how people cope with that.
That’s a cool idea for new production! I picture new stuff mass produced by this society to be standardized, repairable, and somewhat clunky to facilitate the first two. Appliances with more exposed bolts, perhaps some motors exposed the way old tools are set up, where it’s easy to swap one standard motor for another with four bolts and a belt. I figure if you want super sleek consumer stuff, maybe a phone glued into a glass shell or a washing machine you need special tools to disassemble, you might look to items left over from the previous way of doing things. Or you might go to a smaller workshop making custom or specific products. When I was outlining a story the other day, I had an engineer type bemoaning how messy this society is, that the cultural need to find a niche for every still-working piece of machinery rather than throw it out basically means they’ll never truly be free of imperial units and will work with mixed tools for generations, until the last old world engine or turbine finally dies and gets melted down. As for customization, I could see the standardized stuff being offered in a kind of bare bones version, the way the default raspberry pi has no case and no peripherals. Especially with tech I could see a lot of people assembling their own creative cases and layouts to fit their needs and express themselves.
In fact, I have an example from my own worldbuilding from the repurposed parking garage awhile back.
I talked about the 1910s-looking streetcar and how this is actually the more modern, standardized design. I liked the idea that back in the early days of rebuilding society and doing things differently, the first generation of streetcars here were genuinely a community project, that the city/public transit folks settled on some specifications and devoted their limited budget and manufacturing to producing standardized bases, (basically the bottom frame, wheels, motors, controls, and pantograph rig) and that volunteers built the carriages out of whatever they had access to. Each streetcar would be a unique, craft-built contraption, sort of ‘public transit by way of Weekend Wasteland.’ All kinds of crazy streetcars made from campers, boats, old school buses, whatever people had access to. City safety inspectors and a committee of local people with an emphasis on the disabled, would review each one and specify any necessary changes. This got them a fleet of ready streetcars quickly, allowing them to start providing services and prove the concept while more slowly manufacturing standardized ones to replace the most problematic of the home-built machines.
I also mentioned the slow standardization would be somewhat contentious within a community that took pride in building it’s own infrastructure, and in the art-like variety. They might chafe at standardization and formalization, like it’s a sign that society is stratifying again. Though the convenience of a more reliable transit network might help balance it out. As a nod to the artistic spirit and history of the fleet, the new vehicles are painted uniquely by members of the community.
A parade or other shot of a bunch of the old craft built streetcars is on my list to do some day.
You know that southpark episode where a bunch of hippies gathers up in town with their revolutionary ideas about how people will live in harmony, help each other and shit? One will bake bread, other will make clothes, next will ensure safety… And the punchline was that what they’re describing is actually an ordinary functioning town?
Because what you’ve just described sounds very similar to craigslist and goodwill. With a sprinkle of UPS or Fedex.
There’s nothing new here - the tools already exist. What I’m talking about is a difference in scope and priority. Our current society prioritizes the extraction of raw materials, the production of new items, and swiftly sweeps used items into landfills and incinerators so you can buy it again new. So it can be produced again. Some of it ends up on Buy Nothing -type groups, secondhand stores, eBay craigslist, etc. it gets caught and cycled around for a bit. But any given day you drive to a store to buy something there’s a decent chance someone is throwing it away because they’re tired of it taking up space in their home. The new one you buy is unnecessary if the older one still works.
The difference I’m talking about is that the hypothetical society isn’t extracting as much, it’s not producing as much. Reuse is the default, and almost nothing falls through the cracks.
I’m trying to figure out what that society looks like, and yeah, hopefully the answer, from an experience and convenience standpoint, is ‘very much the same.’
Edit: TBH, the criticism I expected was that this would be an impractical way to replace a huge chunk of manufacturing, mining, logging, and other industries in the world. That it’d be too big a change to get enough buy-in, or that the wealth of existing stuff wouldn’t be sufficient to meet even a reduced demand. I really didn’t expect to hear from someone who thinks we’re already doing it.
If craigslist etc (REstore would probably be the closest example to the kind of system I’m talking about IMHO) were already catching all of society’s unneeded working or fixable items, I suspect we wouldn’t be seeing landfills overfilling to their current extent, or crisis around what to do with ewaste and ‘recyclable’ materials. Heck our lives might have been less impacted when supply chains got disrupted since we’d already have a robust system for cycling around existing products.
