For nine months I've been trying to make an electric toaster, myself, starting from scratch. I like toast, as well as many of the other trappings of 21st-century life.

I determined that iron, copper, mica, nickel and crude oil (for the plastic case) were the minimum set of materials from which I could construct a machine to toast bread.

My quest to obtain these raw materials from disused mines in Britain, then to process them myself at home, is perhaps absurd.

But so, too, is the massive industrial activity in the pursuit of additional modicums of comfort at lower prices – small trifles, like an evenly crispy piece of toast, that we quickly become accustomed to.

The laboriousness of producing even the most basic material from the ground up exposes the fallacies in the romantic ideal of a return to a pre-industrialised time. But at a moment in time when the effects of industry are no longer trivial in relation to the wider environment, the throwaway toasters of today seem culturally unreasonable.

Thomas Thwaites
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www.thomasthwaites.com