'Four thousand square foot of blue-flecked linoleum is decorated with maps of the world.... This random patchwork, traversed by thousands of people scuffing its surface, is slowly being worn away, the floor underneath emerging as new oceans eroding the graphic landmass. Fallen sticky price labels and other detritus settle across an ever-evolving cartography formed by human footfall.' Helen Sear reflects on the current ecological crisis and our shared responsibilities across countries and borders. It is a call for human collaboration to avert the permanent loss of other species, in an era that biologist E O Wilson has suggested might be named The Age of Loneliness. In 2018 and 2019 Sear spent several weeks in Durham North Carolina inside the vast warehouse premises of The Scrap Exchange, an organisation dedicated to re-diverting surplus materials from landfill and creating environmental awareness and community through reuse. It is a microcosm for something global, namely our human relat