Bearing Witness: Extinction

If I hadn’t asked a roomful of students and young professionals to raise their hands if they knew what reupholstery was, and if I had not bore witness to no hands going up, I might not have believed it. I was at a zero waste conference, in SF, in 2018. No awareness? None?

A skilled craft that creates local resilience and reduces waste has already gone extinct in some young minds. Who will be the future customers, employees, and business owners of reupholstery services? Is this cause for worry? Yes, and during a climate emergency and with untenable economic inequality, the answer is a resounding yes.

Flush with huge investments in innovative technologies, new corporate partnerships, and fresh messaging, America’s recycling infrastructure is getting a new makeover. They want us to sip on that cold disposable drink and forget the foibles of the past, when America shipped our waste abroad, under invested locally, and helped bury the planet in plastic pollution.

Meanwhile, we’re dealing with talks of extinction in my community. Where’s that same investment in local solutions to circular economy challenges? We need investments that spread prosperity, not concentrate it. Do we have adequate access to reupholstery training, to assure a replacement rate of workers? How are we ensuring a smooth transfer of business ownership to the next generation? Where are the supportive local policies that help grow markets for reupholstered goods like at schools, city offices, and airports, while helping cities’ achieve their waste and climate goals? Where are the partnerships?

We need solutions that democratize the circular economy and going extinct is not one of them.