Cables are everywhere around us. We need them to light our lamps, power our computers and make our kitchen tools spin around. There are a lot of power cables out there but they are all pretty much made the same way and do the same thing—they're not the kind of object that gets upgraded frequently, so they've basically remained unchanged for years and years. 

And yet every time we buy a new electric product, we also get a new cable. Even if the cables we already have are not broken, outdated or obsolete, we still replace them, because, well, we have a new one now...and that must be better, right? 

Actually, most of the time we don't need that new cable at all. (And although it looks like a good deal, you're definitely not getting it for free, by the way.) Instead of perpetuating the piles of messy cable boxes in our homes and the tons of e-waste around the world, what if we just kept our cables? 

The idea to "replace the device, not the cable" is an effort to get the ball rolling in the right direction for this widespread problem. Let me know if you have other suggestions in the comments below.

This story originally appeared on Story Hopper, a collection of design stories worth sharing squeezed into short videos.