Trashlight merges two household icons—the floor lamp and the trashcan. This unlikely combination brings the user’s garbage out into the domestic setting and illuminates it for examination by yourself and others. Trashlight takes transparency to an extreme— nothing is secret anymore, not even your waste.
What happens when we are forced to interact with our trash after we have “thrown it out”? What does our garbage say about us—are there things we are ashamed of admitting we consume? What happens when we have to “curate” our trash—burying things we want to hide and surfacing things we’re proud of? Finally, does putting our trash in the spotlight force us to further consider the nature of consumption and disposability? These are the questions the designer asks.
