Staying (with) Things: Alternatives to Circular Living and Consuming

Environmental crises and climate change are prompting people to explore new ways of managing their consumption, through thing-dieting and recycling, while authorities emphasise the importance of transitioning to a circular economy to reduce waste and resource extraction. Despite environmental benefits, circular solutions have problems, such as continued high consumption and fleeting relationships with objects.
This project goes beyond circular economy to explore alternative forms of sustainable consumption and in particular conditions that favour long-term relationships with objects within the household. Through ethnographic methods we investigate objects that remain and are used for an extended time, staying things. How do long-term relationships arise? What practices and ideas are they embedded in? How are these things taken care of?