Unintended Circular + Podcast #2

From the beach in Maine

Hi all, (listen above)

this week I’m on vacation at the beach in Maine. My great-grandparents purchased a beach cottage in Maine 65 years ago and their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have been enjoying it ever since. (Minus the family drama because who am I kidding.)

Two sustainability/circularity notes about this house:

One: it is on a strip of land between a tidal marsh and the ocean. I assume that this piece of land will disappear in the coming decades due to rising oceans. I’ll enjoy it while I can.

Two: this house is unintentionally super sustainable in the sense that everything is used until it is completely useless. There’s a photo of my father as a baby, 60 years ago, at the same enamel kitchen table that we eat on today. Due to many factors, a big one being attachment to the memories of existing stuff, there is a serious rule about not replacing anything unless absolutely necessary. When something is replaced, the replacement is usually procured from a family member’s basement. The connection to history at the cottage is alive and well- through common displays like family photos, but also through more subtle messaging like the ancient, cracked soup bowls that no one dares get rid of (and I covet).

The house is also tiny for the number of people it is forced to accommodate (11 last night!), and we survive by staying outdoors as much as possible. The house, impossibly but amazingly, backs up onto the beach. We put our folding chairs out each morning and spend the vast majority of our time on the beach, in the water and on the porch. It’s a wonderful push to enjoy the nature our planet offers us. While there are always hard moments, feeling squished into a small space with many others is a really good experience and a reality check about what we need and how we can live. I am so used to having an entire house for three people that its an important ego check to get used to mass sharing and trying to be less set on what is mine.

So that’s a bit about me from vacation + my favorite spot on our porch.

The Untangling Circularity Podcast with Laura Novich

On this week’s podcast, Laura and I talk with Serge Lazarev of Green Tree Textiles about sorting at scale and textile repair. It’s part one of two conversations focused on repairing at scale.

Listen Here 28 minutes

Until next week-

Cynthia