Better Place Furniture Return

Inviting you to honor the trees' final stage of its product lifecycle by ceremoniously returning your old, wooden furniture to the forest

This project is now archived and was part of DDW24

This project is part of
The Symbiocene Forest - Coexistence

“Better Place Furniture Return” puts the lifecycle of trees in the center of our furniture industry and our relationship with wooden products. This kit ultimately helps us express gratitude by creating a ceremonial return of our waste to the forest, the mycorrhizal network, and even our back yard.

In the Kit

The Better Place Furniture Return kit includes a biomaterial body bag, liquid mushroom culture, a burial manual, and comes in a biodegradable box. You can easily put your expired furniture in the body bag, inoculate it, and bury it in a better place.

How It Works

The liquid mushroom culture grows oyster mushrooms inside the body bag, which efficiently decompose the furniture and its toxic materials. The body bag is made of biomaterials that attract mycelium, so the nutrients in the wood and the bag are quickly absorbed by the underground network. Finally, the box is made from compressed paper with seeds, meaning you can leave it as a burial marker and it will grow flowers in its place.

The Story

Shiloh is a broken chair, at the end of its life. For chairs that are beyond repair, there is currently only one place to end up: the landfill, where their decomposing wood emits carbon dioxide and their toxic resins, glues, and finishes are released. But let’s go back to the beginning. First, Shiloh was part of a tree in a forest. If Shiloh had completed its life there, its body would have decomposed and nourished the mycorrhizal network, passing nutrients and carbon to other species. Instead, Shiloh got logged (it happens); was processed into usable wood; and then was made into a new form: a chair. Shiloh’s owner let this chair support their weight until it was spent. But what if, instead of going to the landfill, they could honor this tree’s life cycle and ceremoniously return Shiloh to the forest?