Somewhat related. IKEA is the largest owner of forests in Lithuania (around 33% of the total land area is forest): https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1104260/ikea-the-bi... At the time of this article (2019), they owned 66,000 acres of forest in the country.
Lithuania is about 16 million acres, so that would be about 0.4% which is a lot but doesn’t seem too far out of the ordinary.
There are 50,000 and 60,000 acre tracts owned by separate logging companies near me, and that’s a small part of one county in northern California.
Point being that 10,000 acres isn’t actually as much land as it sounds like, when it comes to forest land.
I guess the argument would go that we would be better off building small quantities of long-lasting re-usable furniture, rather than building and throwing away lots of new cheaper furniture The low prices at Ikea and others definitely encourage over-consumption - buying a new table instead of restoring an old one for example Personally I don't necessarily subscribe to this argument, I think that we can focus on bigge…
Buying new stuff in the west is now cheaper than repairing old items - this is a combination of outsourcing production, loosing skills, and deliberate efforts by compabies like Apple and Sonor to make their equipment unrepairable. https://youtu.be/Npd_xDuNi9k
Also cost of human labour vs automation.
Manufacturing is done by machines but maintenance and repair are generally carried out by humans.
Agree that hostile design or just lack of attention are also huge issues.
I think this is not as easy a calculus as one might imagine. Heirloom furniture is in some ways less sustainable than Ikea products. I am not sure there would be enough sustainable hardwood in the world to meet demand at the scale of Ikea. People have different furniture needs than they did decades ago, and in terms of weight, logistics, material use, Ikea are quite efficient.
The biggest problem is that furniture, instead of a class of objects with longevity and functionality has now become a fashion article, and IKEA is a large factor in that shift.
Not to beat the snowflake millenial drum too hard, but my parents moved from the house they've owned since they were younger than me. They have furniture like bookcases, beds, couches, tables, much of which they offered to me. But I live in a 2 bedroom apartment that is less than 1/3 of the size of their house, so it just doesn't fit. As an example, their dining room table is wider than my living room! I can't take any of that furniture from our family home into my current home whether I want to or not, and even as a dual income household, with one working in tech, we can't afford to buy a house that would fit even half of their furniture.
Because Ikea is the only affordable furniture chain that makes good looking furniture. By that I mean that Ikea furniture doesn't chase current trends the way all the other big chains do (I'm in Austria). So buying furniture from Ikea means that you can use it for a long time without your home looking from a certain area. Also, going to Ikea with kids is a great experience. It's almost like going to a theme park, and…
Honestly the (nearly) unchanging availability is the main selling point - you can buy something today and buy something in a few years that will match (though what you bought today may have broken if you had to move).
I have had good experience moving ikea furniture, by disassembling and then re-assembling it.
This smells like some really bold and really ridiculous PR attempt. "Ikea uses about one percent—yes, one percent—of the world's entire commercial wood supply. That amounts to about 17.8 million cubic yards of lumber last year. " [1] I guess they need this PR purchase to appease some eko organization. And this is equally ridiculous. Ikea is making furniture, something people really need. Why they have to explain them…
It's because they're fighting the arguably true reality that the majority of their furniture is designed to be disposable, and consumers are generally fine with that. I'd like to be wrong, though until we require companies to be responsible for all costs associated with the full lifecycle of a product so externalized costs are incorporated, we're not going to develop the most sustainable practices.
The resale value of my Ikea stuff was quite high. This doesn’t support your argument, at least for my region and IKEA.
I guess the argument would go that we would be better off building small quantities of long-lasting re-usable furniture, rather than building and throwing away lots of new cheaper furniture The low prices at Ikea and others definitely encourage over-consumption - buying a new table instead of restoring an old one for example Personally I don't necessarily subscribe to this argument, I think that we can focus on bigge…
Buying new stuff in the west is now cheaper than repairing old items - this is a combination of outsourcing production, loosing skills, and deliberate efforts by compabies like Apple and Sonor to make their equipment unrepairable. https://youtu.be/Npd_xDuNi9k
> Aren't those peaces of furniture made of composite materials and those not so sturdy shelves. I'd gladly invite to my study, which is decorated using IKEA Galant (office) furniture. Every item in the set is high density wood composite and tables are built upon steel structures. They would outlast my children easily if they're not abused on purpose. Or my Kitchen, which is again built by IKEA with high density compo…
"If not abused on purpose" is the problem - things DO get abused and once engineered wood products start to degrade there's no stopping it. And if water gets in and doesn't get removed immediately you're in for a world of excitement. Given that kitchens are remodeled every 7-10 years "on average" paying for solid wood/plywood might not be worth it. But there's a reason commercial kitchens are stainless steel.
Galant is not "engineered" per se. It's so dense that you can drive screws to anywhere on it. It behaves like drywall.
> And if water gets in and doesn't get removed immediately you're in for a world of excitement.
On higher end IKEA furniture there's no hex structure inside. It's filled. Solid. There's no inside.
My kitchen is 8 years old and it has a solid wood counter. I re-oil it occasionally but, there's no degradation whatsoever. It's guaranteed for 25 years so, it's not something flimsy. Again panels and cabinets are not hollow. There's no inside of these cabinets.
This smells like some really bold and really ridiculous PR attempt. "Ikea uses about one percent—yes, one percent—of the world's entire commercial wood supply. That amounts to about 17.8 million cubic yards of lumber last year. " [1] I guess they need this PR purchase to appease some eko organization. And this is equally ridiculous. Ikea is making furniture, something people really need. Why they have to explain them…
It does smell like a PR attempt. But if a PR attempt is what it takes do something better than what came before I don't mind.
The complication is EXACTLY why we need to be even more in panic and hair-on-fire about environmental issues. A colleague did some analyses for the life cycle emissions of refrigerants. The complexity in the process was absurd, and basically intractable without simplifications. How much indirect CO2 emissions are caused by an inefficient compressor? How much does it depend on how you generate electricity? Which count…
Hence why the real solution has always been: 1. Electrify everything possible 2. Shift all electricity production to renewables, massively increase power output with nuclear nuclear nuclear. 3. Carbon capture.