“We live in a disposable society. It’s easier to throw things out than to fix them. We even give it a name – we call it recycling.”―NEIL LABUTE

One of the biggest obstacles to global sustainability is the rapid extraction of raw materials to produce the stuff we consume (and ultimately throw away in a traditional linear economy).

A few innovators are beginning to design goods with a circular lifecycle, meaning the items can either be disassembled at the end of their service life and returned to the Earth or the constituent materials be endlessly recycled and made into other products. However, we’re still decades away from such products being the norm.

In the meantime, until the business world catches up (and let’s not even mention the political world), we end consumers can take matters into our own hands by keeping our belongings in use for as long as possible, which means learning how to repair them when they break or stop working. This is a skill that Micro Earths inhabitants, being cut off from the outside world, have refined out of necessity.

We will relearn from these people the lost art of mending our own stuff.

More at http://microearths.com/

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