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IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

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Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#151

Post by znpy »

piokoch wrote: post #14

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…

We'll see how that goes, but if they pursue some kind of vertical integration where they can make their own wood in a sustainable way... that'd be pretty sweet imho.

OTOH, it was recently announced that in order to promote sustainability, IKEA is going to sell spare parts too.

That's pretty good imho.

And keep in mind that we're talking about wood, something that's fairly recyclable, all things considered: imagine if apple started doing the same with iphone and macbook pro parts (that is selling spares directly to consumers)

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#152

Post by gigatexal »

piokoch wrote: post #14

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…

I thought it might be a tax harvesting plan. Dunno. Last I looked into Ikea I thought their whole corporate structure was odd: the stores are part of a non-profit holding company that licenses the brand and furniture as art or something to that affect. Seems dodgy.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#153

Post by seeyacall »

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Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#154

Post by znpy »

FriedrichN wrote: post #109
loceng wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been using a lot of IKEA furniture for many years, some new, some secondhand (sometimes I'm the third or fourth owner) and I must say they're quite durable unlike some of the new furniture I've bought over the year and had to throw away.

Yup, I had some second-hand (a desk, used for four eyars) and third-hand (an office chair, used for the last ~9 years) and yes it's pretty durable.

The chair show it's ages on the fake-leather upper side (where your back lays) but then again... It's been used at elast nine years (but maybe it's been ten or eleven).

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#155

Post by usrusr »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #127
fastball wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everytime I hear the word 'carbon capture' I just think of trees. This is literally what trees do, they capture carbon.

Yes, but to get a long term net effect we'd have to bury them about as deep as the fossils we are excavating. I dare claim that this won't happen (it would be far cheaper/more efficient to leave those fossils and synthesize something from those trees up here)

Sometimes I wonder, as a mind experiment, how close we could get to practical carbon burial with a process based on sinking polymer blocks in the ocean: the specifics of the polymer blocks wouldn't matter at all as long as the surface doesn't degrade into spreading microplastics and total density would be high enough to sink, and they could be shaped like standard containers for easy logistics. The result of the mind experiment is always the same, even that could not possibly compete with leaving fossils underground.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#156

Post by contravariant »

pjc50 wrote: post #134
helmholtz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indeed - which is the argument for point-of-extraction carbon pricing. Then you don't have to calculate anything, it gets sorted out along the supply chain by individual decisions as to whether the CO2 cost is worth it compared to the available alternatives at that step .

The problem there is that most ways to add carbon pricing are against the self interest of whomever enacts it. Point-of-extraction is especially bad because it places all of the initial burden on the few places that actually extract carbon, who are probably not going to like that idea.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#157

Post by laurent92 »

renewiltord wrote: post #61
loceng wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't seem that bad to make forests, then cut them down, mix them together with stuff that makes them non-compostable and then just jamming it in the ground. Some local pollution, but you ultimately are sequestering the carbon, so all is well.

In 3 millenias: « Woah! Free chopped wood for our furnaces, from just a dozen feet underground! » — Wait, exactly what we did.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#158

Post by enriquto »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #142
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everytime I hear the word 'carbon capture' I just think of trees. This is literally what trees do, they capture carbon.

And then release a large majority of it when they die and are eaten by fungus and bacteria. https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/recycling-dea...

Thus, growing a tree and burning the wood (or disposing of it) is 100% carbon neutral. What's the problem, then?

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#159

Post by Marazan »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #101
helmholtz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds exactly like the kind of problem market economies handles very well. Main problem is figuring out how to incorporate emissions into price signals.

Pricing negative externialities is EXACTLY the kind of thing market economies are terrible at.

Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed

#160

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

znpy wrote: post #154
FriedrichN wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using a lot of IKEA furniture for many years, some new, some secondhand (sometimes I'm the third or fourth owner) and I must say they're quite durable unlike some of the new furniture I've bought over the year and had to throw away.

Yup, I had some second-hand (a desk, used for four eyars) and third-hand (an office chair, used for the last ~9 years) and yes it's pretty durable. The chair show it's ages on the fake-leather upper side (where your back lays) but then again... It's been used at elast nine years (but maybe it's been ten or eleven).

The thing about IKEA's stuff is that you usually cannot disassemble and reassemble most of it back losslessly when, say, moving houses.

But then again, a lot of more expensive furniture doesn't fare any better.

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