The stats feel tired at this point: the EPA tells us that over 10 million tons of furniture are taken to US landfills each year, and more than 2 thousand tons of major appliances will be tossed onto the heap in 2021 alone. As product designers, this can lead us straight to an existential fever dream, imagining Victor Papanek whispering in our ear: “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a few.”

The reality is that consumption-based capitalism isn't going anywhere. But we as designers and business leaders have the opportunity and the agency to devise ways to implement healthier making and sourcing methods by rethinking our approaches to design.

How can our products' life spans be prolonged? How can our designs encourage repair? How can we insist on our work's participation in a circular economy? I give you, with as much bravado as I may, our solution: Design for Disassembly (DfD).