The production and use of digital B2B and B2C brand content has a significant blind spot: What happens with content when it loses its use or value? What happens to it if a company ceases operations?

In many ways, digital brand content is like solid waste: it starts its life as a valued good, and depreciates to the point where we assume its value is zero — a worthless commodity — while also occupying valuable digital and physical space.

Thinking about content as potential waste can help us think about what is its actual economic value — as well as ways of reselling it, recycling it, and even designing content in more efficient ways.