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Re-framing the Future: A Call to Action for a Just Transition for the Reupholstery Industry
‘Unite and rebuild’ proclaimed an article, in 2019, about how an industry once left to perish could be on the verge of a comeback. The idea that the National Upholstery Association, a brand new trade association started solely by women and dedicated to a trade full of tradition, honor and importance, had launched with such little media fanfare, infuriated me. Determined to imagine a narrative beyond the tired, formulaic piece about DIY upholstery or an upholsterer’s retirement, I wrote one myself. I typed that proclamation as one of the NUA’s newest volunteers, hungry to join others in collective action at the industry level. I knew already that reliance upon upstream…
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What I Learned From Studying Furniture Waste for One Year
Yesterday I presented “What I Learned From Studying Street Furniture for One Year” at the California Resource Recovery Association’s 45th annual conference. I’ve attended this conference once, as a volunteer in 2016, when I helped host a topic lunch around reuse and repair. In 2018, I proposed and won a pre-conference tour slot for the upholstery shop I worked for at the time. We had dozens of conference attendees come to east Oakland to tour our nearly 100 year old, locally owned, 10,000 square foot upholstery workshop. The opportunity to shift the narrative of and image around waste prevention—to include furniture refurbishment, replete with a team of skilled labor earning…
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Tell Me More
Small white sticker reads:Night & Day FurnitureVancouver, WA 98686Model # Cinnamon Futon Bunk BedMonth / Year of Mfg. November 2005Do not remove this label Fascinating and so informative. While they’re at it, could they print another sticker to address their wood sourcing practices, worker conditions, the toxicity of the finishes, and perhaps their end of life plan?
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Furniture Rescue as the System’s Default
Can we *even* imagine a future when our system’s default was furniture RESCUE instead of DISPOSAL? How good would it feel to replace guilt with satisfaction, to know that curbside furniture was heading to its next phase of life, instead of getting buried forever in a greenhouse gas emitting, leachate producing, hole in the ground? Our current system “rescues” recyclables and food waste every day. Hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure exists to keep certain materials out of the landfill. This isn’t a matter of complexity, it’s one of political will, data, awareness and urgency. Earth day, week, month, etc. aka every damn day, is an excellent time to…
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Panel on Sustainable Textiles: Moving Towards a Circular Economy
It was an honor last night to be part of a panel discussion about what a circular economy of textiles can and should be: transformational for individuals, artists, skilled labor, creatives, sheep farmers, the community, and ecosystems. That is my kind of future visioning. Here are some takeaway notes as captured by the moderator, Sy Baker: 👉 There is immense potential for decentralization and democratization👉A Sharing Economy exists–but needs to be expanded upon👉We must get more comfortable with imperfection👉Transparency is key👉Repair is essential–and can be modernized👉People are trying to do the right thing.Thanks @stopwaste for hosting us and thanks to @fibershed_ , @calpsc and Connie Ulasewicz for your efforts that…
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Wildness for the Weary
We’ve been watching “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” documentary by Ken Burns. It was kind of a random selection and kind of a balm since our road trip to the Southwest to camp under the stars, last week, was cancelled, due to COVID. Wildness is a word that came up a lot in the first episode. Wildness. Wildness. I loved it. It stirred something in me. It reminded me of my own journey, which started forever ago as a young student in a new program, Environmental Studies, at a big university in a city shrouded in pollution. A university that didn’t celebrate Earth Day for the first couple of…
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Let’s Begin at the End, Market That Is
Lucy and I passed 7 trees on one walk last week. The city offers a free tree pickup service immediately following the holidays. There are some simple rules to follow: no stands, no decorations, no (fake) snow. (They’re also supposed to be cut into small chunks, but few seemed to get that memo.) This makes it easy for the waste haulers to send the trees to the compost pile, not the landfill. They break down, new soil is born. Trees have an end market: a place to go to recapture their value. Most furniture comes from wood, from trees. It’s treated and processed but its core is wood. Yet, wooden…
