"Long may they live" is what we sing for the people we love. We wish each other health, years, a life full of meaning. But we rarely say it to the things around us. On the contrary: we buy them with the quiet expectation that they will not last. The printer that fails just after the warranty runs out. The smartphone that slows down after three years. The cheap jumper that loses its shape after five washes. We have come to believe this is normal. That this is simply how it is.
But it has not always been this way, and it does not have to stay this way. Behind every discarded washing machine, every broken pair of earbuds, every abandoned chair lies a chain of raw materials, energy, and human work. When we let our things live long again, we save more than money — we spare the earth, and we give meaning back to the objects we share our lives with.
The price of throwing away
Every product carries an invisible backpack. A simple cotton T-shirt needs around 2,700 litres of water to produce — enough to give one person drinking water for two and a half years. A smartphone requires dozens of metals mined across the globe, often under harsh conditions. And yet we use these things for shorter periods than ever before. We have built an economy that runs on speed: the faster something breaks or goes out of fashion, the sooner we buy the next one.
That speed has a name: planned obsolescence. Products are sometimes deliberately designed not to last — a battery you cannot replace, parts you cannot repair, software that slows down older devices. What is good for the quarterly figures is disastrous for the planet. The waste mountain grows, raw materials run out, and the pollution from production and incineration eventually comes back to us all.
Repair is a form of love
A countermovement is under way, and it often starts small. At Repair Cafés, people bring their broken toaster, bike, or lamp to volunteers who help bring them back to life. What happens there is more than technical. It is a different way of seeing: a thing is not finished the moment it breaks. It deserves a second chance, and sometimes a third.
Repair restores not only the object, but also our bond with it. A coat you had mended, a piece of furniture you refurbished, a phone whose battery you replaced yourself — they become more yours. They carry a story. And it is precisely that story that makes us cherish them longer instead of replacing them. In a world that teaches us that new is always better, repair is a quiet act of resistance — and of care.
Making things to last
Real change does not begin with the consumer, but with how things are made. A growing group of entrepreneurs deliberately design products for a long life: modular phones whose every part can be replaced, clothing with a lifetime repair guarantee, machines that are rented out rather than sold, so that the maker has a stake in keeping them running for as long as possible.
That last point is a quiet revolution. When a company no longer makes money from replacement but from longevity, everything shifts. Suddenly it pays to choose strong materials, to keep spare parts available, to take products back and renew them. This is the heart of a circular economy: not a straight line from raw material to waste, but a loop in which everything we make becomes raw material for something new. Nothing is lost, everything gets a next life.
A different relationship with our things
Perhaps in the end it is not only about waste and raw materials, but about how we stand in the world. A society that lets its things live long is a society that values what it has instead of forever craving what it does not yet have. That honours the craftsmanship inside a well-made object. That seeks contentment not in the next purchase, but in maintaining and sharing what already exists.
Long may they live, our things. Not because we value them more than people or nature — quite the opposite. But because every object that lasts longer spares a piece of the earth, honours a piece of craftsmanship, and reminds us of a simple truth: the finest thing we can make is something that endures.