VIDEO: The Common Thread-Waste as a New Harvest

Thank you to all who registered for the 2nd conversation in The Common Thread series, co-hosted by the Nature Lab and Southeastern New England Fibershed. For those who missed it, below is a recap along with a recording (above) of the whole conversation. We want to note that many great questions were asked during this session that we did not have time to answer live. Soon, the questions, with answers, will be made available on our websites.

September 16 hosted the 2nd live conversation of The Common Thread virtual series with Landscape Architecture graduate Fengjiao Ge RISD MLA ’20, New England Alpaca Fiber Pool Founder + Executive Director, Chris Riley, and Textile Artist + Former Fabscrap Community Coordinator, Annie Keating RISD BFA TX ’17.

All three of the presenters showed how understanding waste can inspire local and international innovations; how the ways in which waste, reframed, can heal and support the land and communities.

Instead of letting waste add to the problems we see daily, we, especially brand companies as Annie noted, need to learn about waste in order to see how we can reuse and repurpose it. As Chris mentioned, waste needs to be part of a circular process. We need to immerse it back into our systems and take advantage of the old, the oversupplied, and the trashed fiber (for example) for compost, products, even soil remediation. Rather than seeing waste take up space and degrade the earth, we can instead, as Fengjiao previously shared, “make new land from waste.”

Watch the full recording here

Join us again the following Wednesday, SEPTEMBER 30 at 12 PM Eastern Time for the 3rd live session with Fibershed Executive Director, Rebecca Burgess, and Designer Tareq Alzawawi RISD MID ’19.

This conversation will focus on MATERIAL and SOIL HEALTH. In thinking about what we source from the soil (from food to fiber to biomaterials), how do we determine the sustainability profile of the things we harvest and use for various needs and applications?

You can submit questions in advance to dmuger01@risd.edu or save them for the live event.

RSVP HERE for the Common Thread with Rebecca Burgess and Tareq Alzawawi

Watch all the Common Thread recordings here.

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