-
Who Feeds on a Couch Carcass?
If this was an animal carcass, what would we think? First, that it’s a food source for other members of the local ecosystem. So we would expect scavengers to come and feast. We know that bacteria will help break down what remained, which would feed the soil, among other important activities. Looking closer, we know the bone structure would reveal how it adapted to its environment, the place it called home. In short, we’d get a tiny window into a moment in time that is part of a huge continuous evolutionary cycle. It may sound gruesome, but decomposition is a critical component to maintaining life on Earth. But, this is…
-
Wish-cycling’s True Costs
Wish-cycling is the act of putting something you think/hope is recyclable into a recycling bin. Experts recommend that if you don’t know whether it’s actually recyclable you should assume it’s not because mistaken optimism contaminates the batch and often renders whole loads of recycling unsalvageable. According to Waste Management, their contamination rate for curbside recycling is about 25%. 1 in 4 items do not belong in that recycling bin, or as their website says, “That means that 500 pounds of every 2,000 pounds that we collect at the curb is ultimately discarded as non-recyclable.” Contamination increases costs, reduces efficiencies and sends even more materials to the landfill. I feel like…
-
A Couch, a Crescendo, or Both?
A sofa on a curb. No big deal; life changes, we get new things and discard old ones. Sending furniture to a landfill is considered a benign activity. Why? Who says? When is it time to revisit the merits of old assumptions? Who’s job is that? What if instead of just a sofa on a curb, it is really a window into an enormous system playing out all around us. It’s like background music that we’re so used to we can’t hear it anymore. That noise we can’t hear is the sound of extraction: take natural resources for lowest cost. Take human labor pay lowest price. Turn into goods for…
-
Couches for Seating or Shelter?
What if the valuable humans who are left to rot in the streets are sleeping under a key that could get them out of their prison?
-
Fast Furniture’s Societal Tax
Fast fashion, like fast furniture, is known for its cheap, low quality, high turnover styles. Conveniently, stuff is much easier to toss out when there’s no real financial investment, sentimental attachment, or cultural barrier. What’s not convenient, cheap, or fair is cleaning up after our disposable culture. Oakland spent 5.5 million dollars collecting illegally dumped waste in 2017. Pictured: a couch that could have provided a job for a delivery truck driver, a reupholsterer, or a thrift store employee. A couch that, instead of filling up the landfill with 200 pounds of natural resources, should have provided comfy seating in someone’s front room for 25 more years. A couch that…
-
What do too many strays say about a system?
Who is to blame for the preponderance of furniture waste? Individuals? Cities? Waste haulers? Manufacturers? The system as a whole? A couch can weigh 200 pounds. It is hard to move. There are few places to take them. Used furniture can have pet dander and other hidden allergens. Street furniture are strays, used to being treated well by their previous families, now left to fend for themselves in elements they were never built to withstand. Exposure to city grime= premature death sentence. They know it. We know it. But what do we do about it?
