If You Had One Word to Describe What You See, What Would It Be?

My guess is young people would say chair, and older people would say trash, or garbage, or blight. We’ve been conditioned to look past the object to the outcome.

We know the word garbage turns off our brains, but what happens when you say chair? All of a sudden it has meaning, a shape you can relate to. We all have a favorite chair, a place we love to settle in, sip coffee, stare out the window. Nuance matters.

This is not garbage. We can no longer afford that reductive, mental shortcut. We’re in a climate emergency. This chair is embedded carbon. This chair should stay a chair instead of be buried in a landfill creating methane emissions while putting pressure on forests elsewhere to produce yet another chair. That is the madness that powers our current system.

This chair is a beautiful opportunity. How can we leverage it to better our community?