Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Landfills are Clogging with “Fast Furniture,” Another Side Effect of COVID
November 15,
2022 by HFBusiness Staff in Business Strategy, Industry 
Sales of desks, chairs, and patio equipment jumped by more than $4 billion from 2019 to 2021, according to a market data company, and a lot of it was not made to survive to the end of the decade.
What is being called ‘Fast Furniture’ is mass-produced and relatively inexpensive, is easy to obtain and then abandon. It’s the one season fling of furnishings.
Ikea and Wayfair desks are the target of scrutiny, and it is said they are designed to last about five years. Ikea of Sweden said in a statement, “life span estimation may vary” for its furniture, and customers are encouraged to repair, resell, or return products they can no longer use.
Wayfair noted, “we sell an extensive range of furniture products across all styles and price points,” adding that some are meant to “last for generations as well as furniture that meets customer needs for affordability.”
For all its flaws, fast furniture offers homeowners a chance to live in style at an affordable price. Even if young homeowners wanted to purchase custom pieces or shop for antiques, they couldn’t afford it.
Every year, Americans throw out more than 12 million tons of furniture, creating huge amounts of solid waste that has grown 450 percent since 1960, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Only bits of the tossed furniture can be recycled. The vast majority ends up in landfills.
Some other factors consumers and designers are having to contend with are global supply chain issues, sustainability, and even our current financial circumstance in the unstable economy we are living in.
Ikea has set high climate goals – to be reached by 2030. “Keeping prices low is a cornerstone of our business,” Ikea of Sweden said in a statement. “But this must never come at the expense of people and the environment.”
More than 99 percent of their wood was either recycled or certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as being sourced responsibly in 2021, Ikea said. Fourteen percent was fully recycled.
“The impact of fast furniture,” Ms. Piper said, “is a hard sell to even the most economically conscious people.” But she’s optimistic that change is possible.
“You have elements of sustainability that are sexier to people, and are more the gateway drug to sustainability, like fast fashion,” she said. But if Ikea can do it, “and they’re willing to share how they do it with other companies, that’s really encouraging.”
The original article appeared in the New York Times. You can read it here.