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I Repeat: Waste Management Has More Employees Than the USA Has Upholsterers
I discovered this inconvenient truth while preparing for my @thegfda presentation today, “Furniture Waste as a Catalyst for Change.” Our systems represent our values. What type of future are we investing in? Who will benefit? Who will be left behind? Who has the megaphone? Who holds the power? Thanks again for hosting me Katie, and thanks to everyone who attended! Data source: 44,900 Waste Management employees in 2019 according to Insider Monkey article, compared to 32,870 upholsterers in 2018 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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Imperfectly Perfect. Now What?
Despite our conditioning to constantly cycle through things, parting ways with furniture often makes us feel bad. There’s massive guilt associated with dumping furniture, especially when it’s imperfect—you don’t want to give someone something you yourself don’t want, you don’t want to pay to fix something you don’t intend to keep, you can’t donate it, and landfilling it wrecks your conscience. As a result, people tend to store pieces, out of sight, for long periods of time. Eventually, the guilt lessens as the unwanted piece devolves into something closer to junk status. Thus, making the final disposal easier to bear. This emotional labor is an interesting consequence of our linear…
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A Crisis Blinded by Normalcy
When I hear the word crisis, images of destruction flood into my mind. And yet, my research that documented the furniture waste crisis in my neighborhood—when I captured over 50,000 pounds of discarded furniture within 2 miles of my home in 15 months—found that 50% of it was seating. Just like this perfectly usable dining chair sitting innocently on the curb. No piles+no flames=no crisis? If only. Though furniture waste is plainly visible, it’s insidious. Discarded furniture and furnishings are so familiar they’ve become just another feature of city life. I believe this normalization is preventing us from seeing the crisis for all that it is: a complex mixture of…
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Furniturecycle Featured on Sew Much More Podcast
I want to offer my deepest thanks to Ceil DiGuglielmo, host of the “Sew Much More Podcast,” for having me on her show last week. She was so gracious to include me as a guest among her cadre of home furnishings industry peeps. I appreciated her genuine interest in exploring furnishings from the bottom-up, which, she admitted, is a pretty different approach than she’s used to. We totally go for it and cover old lady furniture, IKEA, imperfect produce, Pinterest, big box stores and more. Take a listen here:
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Oakland Commits To Achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2045
Huge shout out to the City of Oakland whose 2030 Equity and Climate Action Plan and a Resolution committing Oakland to achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2045 passed unanimously by Oakland’s City Council on Tuesday night. “These are groundbreaking steps for Oakland, setting the stage for our work over the coming decade. Achieving carbon neutrality by 2045 will require profound transformation of our building, transportation, and waste sectors,” read Shayna H. Hirshfield-Gold, 2030 ECAP Project Manager’s email announcement. It was an honor to be an adviser on the Material Consumption + Waste section, as a Board Member of the Reuse Alliance. You must check out page 70: “Support the Reuse, Repair,…
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Whisking our Worries Away with our Trash
We’re so conditioned. This treatment of resources is encouraged by our profit seeking systems. It’s become normalized behavior to see precious resources packaged into goods, full of embodied energy, carbon, and labor, piled up on the street and not flinch. People may walk by and sniff it out to see if anything is worth saving, but that’s an imperfect solution and things degrade quickly when they’re left on the street, even when set out in perfect condition. This system says materials are more valuable as garbage than keeping them in and moving them through our local economy. Who benefits from this practice? In whose interest is it for us to…
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Love What Gives You Air
Precious trees. You spoil us with shade, natural air conditioning, water filtration and retention, oxygen, carbon sequestration, habitat, sound absorption and calming beauty. Your incredible functions make life on this planet possible, and you provide all of these benefits, free of charge. Our reliance on you doesn’t stop once you’re felled. Your wood, the natural resource you grew while freely giving us air to breathe, is an incredible and beautiful material from which we build our homes, our fences, and our furniture. These meaningful, long term investments can stand the test of time because of your material quality. Though wooden products can last for generations, humans are operating on ever…
