The dominant understanding of reuse for sustainability is a technical one, which assumes reuse's benefits are limited to the new material, energy and emissions avoided by repurposing, but reuse is much more than that. Reuse and repurposing have always been part of human engagement with objects and spaces. Thus reuse and remaking are important topics in sustainable design, architecture, cultural studies, anthropology, and the sociology, economics and politics of consumption.

Given our current environmental crises and the unsustainable expansion of global consumerism in an age of...