Learning about Throwaway Society from an 89-year-old German
Turns out, there’s a word in every culture for the concept of “throwaway society.” In Germany, it’s “wegwerfgesellschaft.”
I have a friend named Brigitte. I met Brigitte through my partner Jan, who met her when he was in his 20s. Jan became fast friends with Brigitte and her late husband Chris (short for Christian) and remains a steadfast friend to this day. When I first came to BC from the US, I stayed with Brigitte for a few days.
The interesting thing about Brigitte is that she’s 89 and she was born in Dresden, Germany. She and her husband didn’t come to Canada until 1985! Hers is a fascinating story that, like many others of her generation and place, could likely fill volumes. I will probably write about Brigitte more at some point in the future. Today’s story though is focused on a phrase she uttered the other day that I cannot get out of my mind.
“Wegwerfgesellschaft”
Tables
I can’t quite recall now the precise circumstances of how this came up in conversation. Probably, we were talking about how “they just don’t make ’em like they used to.” Actually, I think we were talking about her dining room table. Or maybe it was her little side table that now contains house plants, but that was once, one of the only pieces of furniture that she and Chris owned in their very first apartment after they escaped East Germany for Switzerland.
Yes, I said escaped (!!). Yes, that was a very long sentence. Yes, we often talk about their furniture. Because you see, they have had virtually the same furniture in all of their dwellings since the 60s (right down to the curtains and unburnt beeswax candles).
We were talking about the idea of cheap goods and she muttered this word so quickly, I asked her to clarify what it meant. The reason it caught my ear is that, if you hadn’t already noticed, I’m kind of obsessed with the concept of throwaway culture and how to stop it. I find consumerism endlessly awful and also fascinating. It’s a weird relationship, I’ll admit.
The nuance of language
I also really love — but am horrible at actually practicing — learning languages. I notice that words and phrases in non-English are so much more nuanced, rich, multi-faceted. In high school, I took Spanish but it wasn’t until 2019 that I finally got to hear it in practice while visiting Mahahual, in Quintana Roo. Even then, I was embarrassed to try because I was self-conscious! (For Pete’s sake!) Now, I still speak only English but thanks to Brigitte, am slowly starting to pick up some German. (Further aside: thanks to my partner Jan, I’m (even more slowly) starting to pick up some Czech. Maybe one day I will actually be able to string together a sentence in both!).
Anyway, all this is to say that non-English is much more fascinating than English IMO. In English, we have a word for everything. It’s so obvious. Not so in other languages.
This, it turns out, is the case with “wegwerfgesellschaft.” When I asked Brigitte to explain this, she immediately made a motion as if to suggest throwing something away from her, and she would repeat this out loud, “It’s like to throw something away,” she said. I then asked for a phonetic break-down: was this actually a sentence? Was it a series of words? Nope…just one:
Weg-werf-gesell-schaft
- Wegwerf = disposable, throwaway
- gesellschaft = society
Together: throwaway society. It even has its own Wikipedia page (in German).
Throwaway cultures across continents & time
Why am I even talking about this? It’s simple: I just find this so fascinating. That these concepts exist globally, in different societies and in different ways, and that they’ve been around for a long time. That is to say, the idea of a throwaway culture isn’t new. Not at all, in fact.
I forgot to ask Brigitte when she learned this phrase, but I imagine her answer would be similar to if I were to ask you when you first heard the term “disposable.” As in, you probably wouldn’t be able to point to a specific time or place. It’s just that at some point, you learned the term and connected it to the greater world.
So really then, what’s compelling about this word, “wegwerfgesellschaft” (for me) is that it was uttered by a woman who has been on this earth long enough to know what life was like before single-use plastics. Before the 1955 Life Magazine article bombarded the world with the novelty of disposability. Before Bakelite, before PET bottles, before all of it.
Brigitte was born in 1932. She has experienced poverty, hunger, food shortages, unpackaged food, war, regime changes, bombings, etc. What I wonder now is if this phrase, “wegwerfgesellschaft” is something that evolved out of the gradual increase in cheap goods post-war, or if the phrase always existed, but shifted in meaning. Allow me to explain.
Throwaway then versus now
We sometimes hear in the plastic pollution circles, of societies or cultures that historically made use of or consumed/discarded natural materials like banana leaves or shells, and “threw them away.” The difference is that over time, natural materials decompose or become their own distinct feature (i.e., shell middens which I’ve seen first-hand in midcoast Maine).
But it’s important to consider context and tone with these phrases, and that’s why I think this phrase must be new. When we were talking to Brigitte about her furniture, her use of “wegwerfgesellschaft” implied something: that society no longer values quality-made durable goods. There’s a distinct difference between what and how we consume/dispose of today versus when Brigitte would have been growing up, or even before her time.
It’s as though we kept the action (throw something away) but changed the material (from shells, stone, paper, cloth and glass) to its artificial counterpart (plastic, composites, etc) and then massively increased the quantities consumed and disposed of. Slowly over time, we’ve devalued much of our material world, to the point that it’s now often cheaper to buy something new than to repair it (this goes for anything from furniture to phones to cars!!).
From then to now
Thankfully we’re coming to our senses, but we’ve dug ourselves a pretty deep grave as a collective. Cheap goods are prolific and enticing. We’ve also done an excellent job at removing environmental externalities from the cost of goods so that they appear cheaper. Because of this, it’s difficult (if not impossible) to compel people to “do the right thing” and spend more of their hard-earned dollars on the (perceptively) more expensive item, particularly when we also aren’t making heaps of money at the same time. It’s a real cluster if you ask me.
Earlier I mentioned that English is, frankly, kind of a boring language because we have a word for everything. I think this extends to our solution-making, too. We are so obsessed with “the solution,” singular.
But as with all things, the solution to our collective consumeristic calamity is many things.
No silver bullet
The solutionS (capital, emphatic S!) include all of the notions you already know about, that you can tackle yourself:
- using what you already have
- reducing your consumption of new stuff
- replacing disposable goods with durable alternatives
- refusing certain disposable products, full stop.
But the solutionS also extends beyond just “us” as individual consumers. The responsibility for solution-making also lies with our governments, to legislate disposables out of the equation. And we can’t forget the corporations that got us into this mess and sold us a lie: they must be held accountable for this nonsense. This is happening across the planet and change is happening, even if at a seemingly glacial pace.
What I’d really love to know: if you’re reading this from a non-North American country, how do you reference “throwaway society?” And what is your region doing to combat it?
