Trashion: The Return of the Disposed
Bahar Emgin
That objects lead “social lives” of their own as they move
through their biographies and undergo successive shifts in their
commodity status has already been acknowledged.1 Igor Kopytoff,
a professor of anthropology, introduced the notion of commod-
itization “as a process of becoming rather than as an all-or-none
state of being.”2 The idea that objects do not enjoy an unending
commodity status but that their lives are marked by the ebb and
flow between a commodity and non-commodity was central to
Kopytoff’s argument. As such, Kopytoff wrote, the biography of
an object was considerably similar to that of a person: occupying
different positions, leading diverse careers in the course of different
periods between a beginning and an end, being defined by
different regimes of value that are both economically and culturally
inscribed.3
In light of this argument, one could claim that the end of the
life of an object corresponds to the moment in which it is disposed
of. This disposal might take place in different forms and for
different reasons; however, in the most literal and common sense,
the life of an object ends in a trashcan in the form of waste. In this
1 The idea that objects lead social lives
moment, the object is left valueless in all the possible meanings of
was elaborated and discussed in detail
the term value: It can no more serve a function, it can on no account
in Arjun Appadurai (ed.). The Social
be exchanged for anything else, and it can by no means engage in
Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural
the processes of signification to connote and endow its user with
Perspective, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
specific social values.
2 Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of
This article is about those objects that are recreated from
Things: Commoditization as Process,” in
trash through the process of upcycling. Upcycling is a term used by
The Social Life of Things: Commodities in
architect and designer William McDonaugh and chemist Michael
Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai
Braungart and refers to “the process of converting an industrial
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), 73.
nutrient (material) into something of similar or greater value, in its
3 Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of
second life.”4 I argue that design, in this instance, acts as a tool of
Things,” 66.
transformation and reintroduces into certain orders what was once
4 “Upcycle,” The Dictionary of Sustainable
deemed waste. This theory counters the argument that an object is
Management, http://www.sustainability-
dead once it is disposed of.
dictionary.com/u/upcycle.php, (accessed
Such a conceptualization of waste as “the degree zero of
January 6, 2010.)
5 Gay Hawkins and Stephen Muecke,
value” has been contested for some time in different disciplines,
“Introduction: Cultural Economies of
ranging from economics to environmental studies, but most partic-
Waste,” in Culture and Waste: The
ularly by those studying consumerism or material culture.5 To give
Creation and Destruction of Value, ed.
an example, recycling has been endowed with a wide variety of
Gay Hawkins and Stephen Muecke
economic, environmental, and moralistic claims. Gay Hawkins
(Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
2003), ix.
© 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 1 Winter 2012
elaborates on the changing meanings of waste disposal and the
evolving attributions of recycling in her article titled “Plastic Bags:
Living with Rubbish.” Referring to the work of Susan Strasser,
Hawkins argues that disposal was central to the logic of mass
production and hence should not be assessed as only particular to
consumerism in the twentieth century: “Mass production of objects
and their consumption depends on widespread acceptance of, even
pleasure in, exchangeability; replacing the old, the broken, the
out of fashion with the new. The capacity for serial replacement is
also the capacity to throw away without concern.”6 What Strasser
underlines in Waste and Want, and what Hawkins agrees with in
her article, is the idea that “the ethos of disposability” was fostered
by the “desire for possession or convenience” as early as the 1860s,
leaving behind all concerns for the afterlife of the trash.7 According
to this idea, the emergence of a consumer society in the 1950s
only made the joy of disposing, which was once a privilege of
the upper classes, accessible to the masses. Within the regimes of
value of mass production, disposal was coded as an act directed
toward renewal, restoration, and purification; thus, the process of
disposing was not yet loaded with moral or ethical connotations.8
On the contrary, with respect to the issue of disposability,
waste was handled merely “as a technical problem, something to
be administered by the most efficient and rational technologies of
removal.”9 Only through the rise of environmental movements in
the 1960s did the disposal of waste come to be loaded with negative
meanings and viewed through a moral framework. The enormous
quantities of waste accumulating in urban centers, Hawkins
writes in “Plastic Bags,” were not only taken as a threat to the
environment, but also as a sign of an individualistic, insensitive,
and hedonistic consumer society.10 Waste now became evil. If the
environment is to be saved from our destructive power, then waste
should be “managed,” Hawkins asserts.11 Consequently, recycling
gained its contemporary prominence “as virtue-added disposal . . .
disposal in which the self is morally purified, disposal as an act of
redemption.”12 Disposal in the form of recycling is now a moralistic
attitude through which we pay the debt we owe to the world.
6 Gay Hawkins, “Plastic Bags: Living
with Rubbish,” International Journal of
The new, growing trend of trashion can be assessed within
Cultural Studies 4:1 (2001): 9. For the
this framework of recycling. Trashion is defined in Wikipedia as
history of rubbish, see Susan Strasser,
“a term for art, jewelry, fashion, and objects for the home created
Waste and Want: A Social History of
from used, thrown-out, found, and repurposed elements. The
Trash (New York: Metropolitan Books,
term was first coined in New Zealand in 2004 and gained in usage
Henry Holt and Company, 1999).
through 2005.”13 The term is made from the combinations of the
7 Hawkins, “Plastic Bags,” 9.
8 Ibid., 10.
words “trash” and “fashion,” and its creation can be counted as
9 Ibid.
an example of upcycling. In short, “trashion is a philosophy and
10 Ibid.
an ethic encompassing environmentalism and innovation. Making
11 Ibid., 11.
traditional objects out of recycled materials can be trashion, as
12 Ibid., 14.
can making avant-garde fashion from cast-offs or junk. It springs
13 “Trashion,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Trashion (accessed January 6, 2010).
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DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 1 Winter 2012
from a desire to make the best use of limited resources.”14 The most
outstanding examples of trashion can widely be found among the
booming fields of green or eco-friendly design or the do-it-yourself
(DIY) movement. Trashion emerges first and foremost as a claim to
fulfill the aforementioned moral and ethical responsibility, in the
same way that recycling or waste management are promoted as a
means of “assuaging our guilt about the planet, being virtuous for
the neighbors and engaging in a form of disciplinary individualism
that is both voluntary and coercive at the same time,” according to
Hawkins.15 By means of upcycling or trashion, waste can experience
a rebirth and therefore a second chance of being used and reinte-
grated into exchange or identification processes. Thus, not only
is the environment purified by upcycling, but people involved in
trashion, as both designers and users, are also ennobled by virtue of
their commitment to nature and humanity.
However, to consider either recycling or upcycling merely
as moral issues would be misleading. On the other side of the coin
is the business stemming from these practices; recyclers not only
ease their conscience through recycling; they also make a profit.
Recycling, as “the huge tertiary sector devoted to getting rid of
things, is central to the maintenance of capitalism; it doesn’t just
allow economies to function by removing excess and waste—it
is an economy, realizing commercial value in what’s discarded,”
Hawkins and Muecke write in Culture and Waste.16 In the same
manner, upcycling has already been turned into a business:
Certain designers labeled eco-friendly are earning money through
upcycling, competitions are organized around trashion, numerous
websites are devoted to promoting and selling upcycled objects,
and online and print resources explain how to upcycle at home. In
short, there is a whole sector of upcycling now.
Only mentioning the moral and economic aspects of upcy-
cling and arriving at a conclusion regarding the consequences of
it for consumer culture would be cutting corners. There is still
more complexity to the issue than appreciating upcycling for its ethi-
cal stance or blaming it for being only another means of commoditiz-
ing. What is left untouched in this account, Hawkins and Muecke
point out, and what is more promising for an analysis of trashion, is
the “cultural economy of waste” that “can work on different strata:
symbolic, affective, historical and linguistic.”17 First, as Hawkins
and Muecke point out, this approach requires an emphasis on the
“hierarchical, ordered, and systematic determinations of value.”18 In
addition, a new conception of waste, which does not handle rubbish
as valueless and evil, is required. Only from this perspective can we
acknowledge waste as an active agent in the regimes of value. For
14 Ibid.
this reason, I introduce in the following section the changing concep-
15 Hawkins, “Plastic Bags,” 12.
tions of waste that are central to my analysis of trashion.
16 Hawkins and Muecke, “Introduction,” x.
17 Ibid. xvi.
18 Ibid.
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 1 Winter 2012
65
1. Re-considering Waste
Contributions to the reconsideration of the notion of waste have, to
a great extent, come from the field of anthropology. Ethnographic
studies on gift and potlatch, burial rites and sacrifice, as well as
studies of consumption itself, influenced certain scholars and gave
rise to the questioning of old notions of waste and disposal. Kevin
Hetherington is one scholar who has considered the subject in light
of the studies on disposal by Mary Douglas, Roland Munro, and
Michael Thompson. Hetherington begins his analysis with a refusal
to see the concept of disposal as “the last act that leads inexorably
to a closure of a particular sequence of production-consumption
events.”19 Disposal for him lies at the heart of consumption and is as
central as the accumulation of objects to “managing social relations
and their representation around themes of movement, transforma-
tion, incompleteness, and return.”20 In this respect, Hetherington
writes that a spatial dimension is added to the issue of disposal,
and it becomes a matter of “placing” rather than discarding:
[D]isposal is a continual practice of engaging with making
and holding things in a state of absence, [with] any notion
of return (beyond simple equations of return with green
recycling), or [with] any notion of understanding how
something can be in a state of abeyance or “at your
disposal” and what the effects of that might be.21
Once the linear passage from production to consumption and lastly
to disposal is broken, the role of disposal in the processes of both
individual and social ordering becomes apparent. Disposal is not an
end to these processes in succession, but a matter of putting things
in a state of absence, invisibility, or remoteness—either metaphori-
cally or literally—through a process of valuation, and in this manner,
disposal—keeping certain things as “matter out of place”—func-
tions to stabilize the processes of ordering, Hetherington writes.22
However, the discussion at this level is quite structuralist, according
to Hetherington, and is directed toward maintaining a definite and
stable social order. The significance of disposal for consumption can
only be assessed if disposal is viewed “as a recursive process.”23 That
19 Kevin Hetherington, “Secondhandedness:
Consumption, Disposal, and Absent
is, disposal is never complete; objects can never be disposed of 100
Presence,” Environment and Planning D:
percent, but they fluctuate between a state of absence and a state
Society and Space 22 (2004): 159.
of presence. The disposed always carries with it the possibility of
20 Hetherington, “Secondhandedness,” 157.
coming back: “Its capacity for translation remains as an absence just
21 Ibid., 159.
as much as when a presence is encountered.”24
22 Ibid.
In
Culture and Waste: The Creation and Destruction of Value, John
23 Ibid.
24 Hetherington, “Secondhandedness,” 162.
Frow deals with the issue of waste by opposing the theories that
25 John Frow, “Invidious Distinction: Waste,
handle it as “the degree zero of value” or “the opposite of value”
Difference, and Classy Stuff,” in Culture
or “whatever stands in excess of value systems grounded in use.”25
and Waste: The Creation and Destruction
He refers to the role of waste in constructing value in this way: “On
of Value, ed. Gay Hawkins and Stephen
Muecke (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, 2003), 25.
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DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 1 Winter 2012
the one hand it is residually a commodity . . . On the other hand, the
category of waste underpins any system of social distinction, as the
principle of uselessness that establishes a non-utilitarian symbolic
order.”26 Similar to that of Hetherington, the symbolic order or
the systems of value that Frow defines are far from being definite,
closed, and static structures. On the contrary, value is always referred
to as a “process, a movement, a cycle” being defined, contested, and
redefined over and over again.27 Within such a value system, waste
or rubbish retains its chance of return and is even bestowed with the
chance to define a completely new regime of value, disturbing the
orderings and classifications that are based on the preceding one.
For both Hetherington and Frow, waste—or the valueless—
can always reach a totally adverse state of high value, and even over-
value, and they both elucidate this possibility through references
to Michael Thompson’s Rubbish Theory. As Hetherington explains,
Thompson in his study defines three different classes of objects:
durable, transient, and rubbish. Durable objects are marked by their
high status and hence they are, in a manner of speaking, dignified;
transient objects cannot enjoy a life-long high status, and their value
decreases gradually over time; and rubbish, as the last category, can
by no means be valued: “They become blanks that can address not
only the question of value in the singular instance but also value
as a general category.”28 The status of objects in the categories of
both durable and transient is clearly defined; the codes that assign
these objects to their categories are fixed; and their value is under the
control of social agents who strive to maintain the existing ordering.29
However, the case for rubbish objects is different; they are free from
the control exerted on the other two categories. Hetherington writes
that they stand on “a blank and fluid space between the other two
categories, helping to maintain their separateness while also provid-
ing a conduit for objects to move back and forth into the regions of
fixed assumptions.”30 Hetherington criticizes Thompson’s classifica-
tion for its stress merely on exchange, which he says overlooks other
possible ways of valorizing an object (e.g., a sentimental valoriza-
tion). Nevertheless, for both Hetherington and Frow, the value of
Thompson’s classification lies in the manner in which it opens up a
dynamic space that allows a transition between categories and thus
transformations in status, which in turn introduces fluidity to value
systems. In light of Thompson’s classification, it becomes possible
to conceptualize rubbish as the “conduit of disposal rather than that
which is placed in the conduit.”31
At this point, Hetherington introduces a new metaphor and
places the door, rather than the dustbin, as the proper exemplar of
26 Frow, “Invidious Distinction,”26.
the conduit of disposal. “Not only do doors allow traffic in both
27 Ibid., 35.
directions when open, but they can also be closed to keep things
28 Hetherington, “Secondhandedness,” 164.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., 165.
31 Hetherington, “Secondhandedness,” 164.
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 1 Winter 2012
67
outside/inside, present/absent, at least temporarily and provision-
ally.”32 Thus, not only is the process of disposal flexible, but the
conduits of disposal are themselves fluid, undermining through
the process of transfer any possibility of stability in the regimes of
value used.
The passage of the objects through these conduits can end
either in de-commoditization, namely in prolonging the priceless
state of being—not at the level of zero value this time, but at the
level of such a high value that there can be no equivalent for it in
any exchange system or in commoditization. Commoditization, here,
would rather be referred to as re-commoditization since the object in
question had once been a commodity before it moved through the
conduit of disposal. Collection constitutes an example of the former,
while trashion provides an example of the latter. Hetherington also
refers to collection as a conduit of disposal:
Still, much collecting derives its meaning precisely from
this dynamic—the making of the reputation of an object
(and thereby its status and value) by making it visible,
recognisable, and “respectable” (including cult or subcul-
tural respectability with respect to kitsch). A cheap,
contemporary, utilitarian object can be disposed of by one
generation only to return later and be claimed as a design
classic by the next.33
Valorization through the conduit of collection is not performed at
the level of exchange value because the object of collection does not
gain an extensive exchangeability; on the contrary, its exchange-
ability for anything else is substantially restricted. Through this
process, the act of “singularization” can be pointed to as the creator
that counteracted the object’s commoditization. Singularization, as
defined and elucidated by Kopytoff, is a process by which things
are deprived of their commodity status through a withdrawal from
the sphere of exchange.34 The struggle between singularization and
commoditization begins at the very moment that the actual exchange
is accomplished— when the thing is stripped of its unquestionable
commodity status.35 From this moment on, the thing is vulnerable to
several processes of individual or collective singularizations, which
in turn deactivate it as a commodity and cause shifts in its biography.
For the waste, which has been left valueless, singularization
would not come to mean decommoditization but would mean that
the object is prevented from being commoditized; valorization occurs
in the form of sacralization.36 In this manner, the object is given value
at the level of symbolic exchange, as explicated by Jean Baudrillard
in For a Critique of the Political Economy of Sign; these objects of collec-
32 Ibid.
tion come to be valued—not within the exchange system itself but
33 Ibid., 165.
34 Kopytoff, “The Social Life of Things,” 74.
35 Ibid., 83.
36 Kopytoff, “The Social Life of Things,” 80.
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personally with regard to the place it occupies within social relations;
it thus becomes invested emotionally rather than monetarily.37
In the following section, I concentrate on the issue of trashion
as a conduit of disposal and, offering examples, elaborate on the
consequences of such transformation for the issue of consumption.
Design as a Conduit of Disposal
Design has now turned into an indispensable aspect of market-
ing strategies, whereby products are inculcated with added value.
Thus, products can be differentiated in the market, tailored to the
presumed tastes and choices of socially and culturally differentiated
target groups. In this respect, it is not surprising that the world of
rubbish has become a treasure for design—a profession consider-
ably involved in the generation of value through a creative process.
In this treasure, we find not only objects that are disposed of, but
Figure 1
also forgotten styles, archaic technologies, and bits and pieces that
Tail Light by Stuart Haygarth.
never had the chance of acquiring any value. The magic wand of
design transforms these worthless, forgotten, neglected, and thrown
out items into precious pieces of aesthetic and moral value. In this
manner, design opens the door for the trashy to flow toward the
world of the valuable and valued.
The Tail Light (see Figure 1), by Stuart Haygarth, constitutes
a good example for the issue in question. The light is included on a
list of “25 Innovative Re-purposed Home Fittings Designs” gener-
ated by FreshBump, a social news medium devoted to the fields of
advertising, architecture, computer arts, graphic design, illustration,
industrial design, interior design, and photography.
The light, which, as its name suggests, is made of vehicle
tail lights, is promoted on the FreshBump website as follows: “A
busted tail light can you get pulled over, but it can also give you
a creative new light fixture. Artist Stuart Haygarth was inspired
by lenses covering vehicle lights, seeing in them something more
elevated than banal tail lights.”38 Vehicle lights, which have never
been considered objects in their own right, are now “elevated” to the
status of a designed object, with an unexpected increase not only in
their aesthetical attributes but also in their price. Thus, this trivial,
insignificant, plastic thing is successfully commoditized by flowing
in the opposite direction in the conduit of disposal.
Another item taken from the same list is the Cassette Cabinet
(see Figure 2). In making something from what we have lost through
the advances of technology, this cabinet valorizes nostalgia:
37 Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the
Mixtapes have long been used to commemorate love (and
Political Economy of Sign (St. Louis:
Telos Press Publishing, 1981), 64-5.
heartbreak), season changes, irrational obsessions with a
38 “25 Innovative Re-Purposed Home
band, and life milestones. (It’s easier to turn 30 when it’s
Fittings Designs,” FreshBump,
to the soundtrack of Aretha Franklin.) Now that we’re in
http://www.freshbump.com/featured/
featured/25-innovative-re-purposed-
home-fittings-designs/ (accessed April
1, 2009).
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 1 Winter 2012
69
the compact disc age, you’re stuck with cassette tapes filled
with dated music and emotions, but all’s not lost. Creative
Barn shows how tapes can serve a more valiant purpose
than collecting dust.39
The cabinet, designed by Patrick Schuur, was made by placing 918
cassette tapes on a wooden frame structured to create a spacious
storage area. It endows the once-useless mountain of garbage with
a new function. In addition, this monument of archaic cassettes
unearths and pays tribute to the distant memories, forgotten
moments, and absent people embedded in those memories.
One last example from the list is the mattress chair, Madam
Rubens, designed by Frank Willems (see Figure 3).40 In the design-
er’s description, “Madam Rubens is a plump but sophisticated lady
after an extreme makeover. She started her life as a mattress but
was thrown away after years of loyal service.”41 Recognizing that
mattresses cannot be recycled, the designer develops this solution,
guided largely by an environmentalist responsibility. The chair is
a combination of a disposed mattress and the legs of an antique
Figure 2
chair. For each chair, the mattress is folded in a different way and
Cassette Cabinet by Patrick Schuur (Photo by
Wouter Walmink).
combined with different chair legs to assure that Madam Rubens is
unique every time. The chair also is painted in a bright vivid color
of choice to complement its newish look. Thus, “Madam Rubens is
back in business as a fresh, hygienic, and exceptionally stylish tool.”42
If these old-fashioned table legs were not combined in such an
innovative manner with an already discarded mattress, they would
likely be thrown away to be replaced by brand-new minimalist ones
and would never be re-placed in the first place, at home. Moreover,
the mattress, which has never been put on display before, steps up
to the living room as an object of distinction. Any traces of outdated-
ness and mediocrity are erased and re-valued through a redefined
function and a chic appearance. In this case the style is rescued
from the past and its remnants, translated through the conduits of
disposal, are transformed into a new design language.
All these translations can be considered reincarnations or
rebirths, following Hetherington’s adaptation of the two-phased
burial practices in certain cultures that are introduced by Hertz to
the realm of inanimate objects. The first place of burial for the objects
can be “the bookcase, the recycle bin on a computer, the garage,
the potting shed, the fridge, the wardrobe, even the bin” in which
the objects are left for some time “while their uncertain value state
is addressed . . . before being removed into the representational
39 Ibid.
outside, where they undergo their second burial in the incinera-
40 Ibid.
tor, the landfill, or unfortunately sometimes just fly-tipped onto the
41 Frank Willems official webpage, http://
side of the road.”43 The interval between the two processes is of great
www.frankwillems.net/ (accessed
October 24, 2011).
42 Ibid.
43 Hetherington, “Secondhandedness,” 169.
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