WBEZ The Rundown Interview
Katy Osborn turns other people’s trash into upcycled treasures
In this episode, host Erin Allen talks to Osborn about upcycling, connecting consumers with sustainable goods and ways she finds hope.
With climate change accelerating and overconsumption booming, it can feel like we have no agency over our impact on the planet. But artists who work with upcycled and reclaimed materials want to challenge that narrative.
“We’re the band playing as the Titanic goes down,” said Nowhere Collective founder Katy Osborn. Through the Nowhere Collective, she runs a series of Trashy Markets, which are exactly what they sound like: markets for makers who work primarily with trash.
Listen now:
Quotes and highlights from the interview:
Terminology: Recycling is downgrading the materials. Reusing is 1:1 - you take a table and use it as a table. Upcycling - the most potential - lives in a new life, in a new form, and it has more value than when it began
Regarding materials: “You have to let them marinate - sit in a closet and marinate - let your mind marinate”
Nowhere is facilitating the connection with the people that have the stuff that would end up in the trash, with the people who have the creativity and the skill to transform that stuff and use it in a way that extends it’s life and uses it to its fullest potential
Each year, 260 tons of trash arrives at the landfill and it goes Nowhere. It sits in someone else’s backyard.
“.. we have to live with this trash whether we like it or not.”
Reagarding Trashy Markets: I started them because I was upcycling my own stuff and there wasn’t a market for it
Trashy Markets are an opportunity to create Joy in connecting with people on a very human level
Loom360 has turned into one of the most beautiful ‘yes, and’ projects
Living in the in-between + straddling the need to reduce consumption and desire to consume more wisely … “we aren’t cutting down trees, we aren’t mining precious minerals, we aren’t using our natural resources, we aren’t transporting things across the seas .. we’re paying the people that are making the stuff”
The magic of the Trashy Markets helps people rethink the things that they buy and maybe gives them pause when they are about to throw something away …. “Who else can use this, what else can I do with it? How can I let it live its fullest life and use this things to its fullest extent.”
“I grew up in a family of 6, my dad would put pickle juice in the ranch bottle to make the ranch go further.”
