An excerpt from an essay written by two scrappers in Toronto. I like the idea of re-user as sin-eater.
We’ve concluded that it’s possible to discern shifts in cultural values, decorating fashions, vacancy rates and economic fortunes long before demographers and the popular press acknowledge them. We’ve come to understand how a complex, nearly invisible economy of salvage connects scavengers, recyclers, scrap haulers, curb-surfers, antique dealers and consumers. We’ve learned that it’s possible to furnish a home, landscape a garden, clothe yourself and supplement your income by salvaging the objects other people throw away. We’ve also come to believe that adopting a philosophy of salvage might help us save the earth by challenging rampant overconsumption, affirming conservation and reuse, encouraging a closer connection between want and need, and restoring urban processes more in tune with natural regenerative capacities.
Like sin-eaters, we absolve the guilty by absorbing their transgressions, but the price of our subsistence is ostracism.
