The news this morning might be all about the Oscars, but I wouldn’t want you to miss out on February’s other big awards ceremony – the Landfill Prize.
The Landfill Prize is “a monument to perverse imagination and needless consumption”, and it’s awarded to the most pointless and wasteful consumer product of the year. It’s the brainchild of John Naish, author of ‘Enough‘, and a reaction against Britain’s chronic throwaway culture, especially since we’re now running out of landfill space.
“Our culture is easily capable of producing myriad consumer items that are durable, reliable and useful enough to give years of great service,” he writes. Unfortunately, that’s not what happens. Instead, “we’ve got fixated on producing and consuming stuff that has no future. It’s only there to take our money on its brief trip from factory to landfill.”
Hence the Landfill Prize, there to “celebrate the stupendous creativity of the people tasked with inventing constantly inflated new wants for us to want.”
This year’s winner is this gloriously over-complicated piece of tat, the Philips Sonicare Flexcare toothbrush. The ‘ultimate in advanced technology’, it features ultra-violet sanitising and multiple brushing modes, ‘giving you the flexibilty to personalise your individual brushing needs’. It retails for £179, but according to Which, it cleans no better than a normal toothbrush used properly.
The Earthbound Report 
I found my way to this page having just read ‘Enough’. I searched on google and fell into this rabbit hole. I am amazed that Noone has added a single comment to this post in over a year. That’s a shame.