Abstract
Existing attitudes to waste in sustainable design treat it as a quantity to be minimized: reduced, reused, or recycled. However, according to the field of Discard Studies, waste, and the act of wasting, are shaped by wider social, political, and material systems of interest to design (Liboiron & Lepawsky, 2022), therefore working with waste can have broader implications for design practice. We introduce the principles and methods of Discard Studies, through a report on the participatory project "L'Arxiu de Rastres Tecnològics de Vic", carried out in Vic, Catalonia, in autumn 2025. The project used Discard Studies methods to encourage participants to reflect on the lives and afterlives of their digital waste through speculative practice, and to imagine more regenerative futures for their discarded devices. We close with conclusions on how an attention to waste, informed by Discard Studies, might be useful to design practice more generally.
Keywords
waste, sustainable design, systemic design, discard studies
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1740
Citation
Cowlishaw, T., Soler Adillon, J., and Blasco Soplon, L. (2026) “Everything that no longer relates to anything”: Discard Studies for thinking through waste in design, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1740
Creative Commons License
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Included in
“Everything that no longer relates to anything”: Discard Studies for thinking through waste in design
Existing attitudes to waste in sustainable design treat it as a quantity to be minimized: reduced, reused, or recycled. However, according to the field of Discard Studies, waste, and the act of wasting, are shaped by wider social, political, and material systems of interest to design (Liboiron & Lepawsky, 2022), therefore working with waste can have broader implications for design practice. We introduce the principles and methods of Discard Studies, through a report on the participatory project "L'Arxiu de Rastres Tecnològics de Vic", carried out in Vic, Catalonia, in autumn 2025. The project used Discard Studies methods to encourage participants to reflect on the lives and afterlives of their digital waste through speculative practice, and to imagine more regenerative futures for their discarded devices. We close with conclusions on how an attention to waste, informed by Discard Studies, might be useful to design practice more generally.