One reason for this rapid growth is a fastly developing trend of wearable technology, i.e.

While the emergence of wearable technology provides ample opportunities to develop and make our every day lives more convenient, it also has its drawback.

With correct design, production, use, and disposal wearable technologies can be part of the vision towards more sustainable societies.

Perhaps the most significant concern with wearable technology is that combining electronics and textiles, which both are relatively short-lived mass consumer goods, would intensify product obsolescence and lead to even shorter service lives.

There is a fear that wearable technologies would end up being yet another mass consumed and mass disposed of consumer good.

In the worst case scenario, wearable technologies could amplify impacts on the environment, human health, and societies through increasing power consumption, consumption of scarce resources and generating large streams of hard-to-recycle electronic waste.

In addition, wearable technologies would further intensify an always-online — culture, which could have a harmful impact on genuine human interactions and general wellbeing.

However, it is also assumed that wearable technology can have a disruptive influence on current mass consumption patterns, once they make a breakthrough.

They could possibly help to slow down the consumption of new products by lengthening the product lifespan.

One way to achieve an expanded life cycle is to enhance the meaning creation between the user and the product.

Wearable technologies could also help to retain cultural traditions and heritage by storing information and knowledge and passing them from generation to another.

It is envisioned that wearable technologies could even play a role in helping public protection activities and responding to social crises.

Ultimately, what will determine the sustainability effect of wearable technologies is the actual user behavior.

Even though the product would be design according to the highest sustainability standards, it is the users’ small daily decisions that can override these efforts!

With conscious product design, many pitfalls can be avoided, but the resulting consumer behavior can never be fully controlled.

Thus, whether wearable technologies are leading us in a right direction is crucially dependent upon how we will adopt them, how we will take care of them, how long we will use them and finally how we will dispose of them?