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Love in the Time of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
On disposable relationships and a culture of heartache
It’s that time of year again: the post-Valentine’s comedown, when all the shiny heart-shaped balloons are transmuted from gifts into trash. Maybe we compost the wilted roses, but most of our displays of love wind up in the landfill or clogging up the gutters, where they make their way like sea turtles back into the sea.
I don’t bring this up to shame you if you bought your lover a balloon. It’s not your fault the economy is like this. Disposability is a culture, one that’s taken over the world. We wear low-quality fast fashion that unravels easily, made of materials that don’t biodegrade. We watch forgettable big-budget films that scratch our itches but still leave us empty. We connect on tech that’s designed to become obsolete, fighting for the right to repair what we depend on while fewer and fewer of us know how.
Disposability might be the most insidious part of consumerism. Like convenience culture, it teaches us how not to try.
It’s seeped into our relationships too, this “thank u, next” attitude to sex and dating that tells us if we aren’t getting exactly what we want, we can and should move on. What do we call leaving a partner? Dumping them, like a single-use plastic, like a toy we…
