BITS ‘N’ PIECES

Guiltless plastic designer Rossana Orlandi’s mission Around 13 million tonnes of plastic leaks into our oceans every year. Rossana Orlandi is an Italian designer encouraging others to use it as a material in their work before it gets there. She’s launched a prize to get people thinking about new ways to build furniture out of recycled plastic.Gifts and minimalismWe’ve been taught-conditioned-to believe gift-giving is a superior way to show our love for one another, that gift-giving is one of our “love languages.” When you think about it, though, we realize how ridiculous it is to commodify love, and yet we treat it as gospel: I love you, so here’s this expensive shiny thing I bought.? Material gift-giving is a pernicious cultural imperative, and we’ve bought it (literally bought it) hook, line, and sinker. We’ve become consumers of love. The grotesque idea that we can somehow purchase love is nauseating and potentially dangerous. We often give gifts to show our love because we are troubled by real love. Gift-giving is, by definition, transactional. But love is not a transaction. Love is transcendent: it transcends language and material possessions, and it can be shown only by our thoughts, actions, and intentions.?Instead, we can gift experiences and our time. We’ll not just save a lot of money in the process, but also feel better about how we show our love. Consider these experiences: concert tickets, a home-cooked meal, tickets to a play or a musical, breakfast in bed, massage, walking or driving somewhere without a plan, spending an evening talking with no distractions, visiting a festival, watching a sunrise, making a batch of hot cookies, taking a vacation together, watching a wintertime sunset.Compiled by SG

from The News International - US http://bit.ly/2TVRByz