Design solution: Repurposing old gadgets

" ... If the creation of new products is part of the problem rather than the solution to sustainability in a world of climate change, overburdened landfills and dwindling supplies of inexpensive mineral resources, then does the designer have a role if consumerist society were to desist from its quest for novelty?

“On the face of it, and within the conventional parameters of product design, it would seem that the answer would be no,” says Walker, “or at most, relatively little.” However, he suggests that a broadening of definitions of what design involves could lead to a new generation in design that exists not simply to create novel products but to use the creative skills of individuals to re-work old products.

Walker takes as a case in point the “old-fashioned” stereo radio-cassette player, which had its heyday in the ghetto blasters of the 1980s. Countless ghetto blasters will have hit landfills in the decades since and yet, with a little imagination, a once prized possession could become a new outlet for a portable mp3 player with a simple rewiring of the input circuitry.

Such re-purposing may not be fashionable, there is not at present any cachet nor retro-chic associated with the ghetto blaster as generation after generation of sleek touch-sensitive portable media gadgets hit the market month in, month out. And yet it would take only a few cultural innovators seeing the potential of this and other examples for rebuilding and repurposing to lead to a consumer tipping point in which such a primal approach to recycling became the height of fashion. ... "

From Giving the Ghetto Blaster Retro Chic