~17 square miles, that's a sizable purchase. The _real_ benefit would occur if they manage it correctly (simulating natural forest fires with sustainable logging practices) and harvest the carbon that is captured so more carbon can be captured.
IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
421–430 of 622 posts
Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
#422I never understood why people hate IKEA. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized. But guess what, IKEA is a business responding to the needs of people. The negatives that are mentioned frequently are merely a symptom of our ever faster developing society. The people who complain are the same ones that just buy cheap crap from china without even thinking ab…
I completely agree. Ikea really seems like a bit of unicorn in this space to my mind too. In the world of products that are affordable they tend to also be ugly or lacking consideration. Ikea offsets this by over-valuing considered design compared to nearly everyone and then making novel manufacturing concepts.
There really is something about a company that provides incredibly cheap products with a LONG return policy and good design to the masses. Plus their products might use a lot of wood, but they also offset it with renewable initiatives and by putting a lot of time into efficient shipping.
Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
#423I never understood why people hate IKEA. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized. But guess what, IKEA is a business responding to the needs of people. The negatives that are mentioned frequently are merely a symptom of our ever faster developing society. The people who complain are the same ones that just buy cheap crap from china without even thinking ab…
A close friend of mine filled his house entirely with furniture, including couches, from the 1800s. Antique grandfather clocks, pianos, tables, armoires, etc. Not surprisingly, this person is highly skilled with wood and works at a small furniture shop that makes high-quality tables and chairs.
Things made out of wood can last centuries. There's no need to further accelerate our throwaway culture with throwaway furniture.
For this reason primarily, I hate IKEA and do not buy from them. I prefer to buy actual furniture made by actual people. Reward local artisans, businesses, and shops and avoid waste. Reject globalism. It is what is eating the planet.
Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
It did used to last a lifetime though, my parents bought some items in the 1970s which they still use today (stools, shelves and the odd table), it still looks good as well.
IKEA has several “tranches” of cheap furniture. Some of it is solely designed to hit a price point (“a $10 chair”) and is made of cheap plywood, cheaply connected. Some of it is more the “can we pick some low hanging design fruit, apply massive scale, and create a decent chair for 20% of the price it would normally cost” variety. That furniture normally lasts a long time.
Bingo. Maybe people don't realize that Ikea makes both low-end and mid-range products. They will gladly sell you a $25 entertainment center (Lack-based) and a $500 entertainment center. The expensive items last and many classic designs remain at steeply discounted prices from original manufacture date. (For example, the Pöang originally costing ~$300 adjusted is now $79.)
Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that that is only the case for items which are bought as components. Items which are bought complete inside a single box have to be replaced as such. For example, the assembly guide for the classic Billy has no item numbers listed apart from connectors - https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/assembly_instructions/billy-bookc... Coincidentally this appears to be changing as of yesterday - https://www.bbc.co.u…
Calling everything a connector is a bit disingenuous. If you look at the PDF it has 8 part numbers listed, which is a number for all of the small parts. Also the doors, doorknobs, hinges etc are all available to order. What's left are shelves and the two wooden sides of the bookcase itself. The shelves can be ordered: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/billy-extra-shelf-white-1026529... So I would rephrase your "no item nu…
You can buy extra shelves as a form of accessory to the main unit - it just so happens that these accessories are equivalent to the ones that come with it. Fair enough, but IKEA sells them to augment your purchase, not as spares.
This is clear because, as you say, you cannot buy the sides, or the unique bottom piece on its own. And the piece which is most likely to degrade is the one which has many connectors pushed into particle board potentially multiple times - the sides.
Maybe it was a poor example, but I think my point still stands. There are many other furniture products for which no spares are sold, or happen to be available to purchase for other reasons.
Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
When people say "designed to be disposable" they don't mean reuse is not possible - just not likely, because a thing wears out quickly, or is a hassle to give someone else. Former means there's not much of a second-hand market, the latter means that even giving away for free is too much work compared to just dumping it. I'm very much surprised about the amount of comments here on HN (today and in many previous discus…
I've moved twice with all of my furniture and it's still going strong. The only thing that worries me for my next move would be the board on the back of my bookshelf, since it's only held in with very tiny nails.
If I understand which board you're talking about (a thin hardboard on the back), I'm usually not worried about that one - I have a stockpile of nails available, and I could probably reinforce it with something I have on hand if the edges degrade too much. My problems are usually that driving screws and other fasteners sometimes damages the material, making the connection single-use only. It's fixable to some extent with adhesives, but once you start pouring glue down the shafts, the whole thing becomes that much harder to disassemble in the future.
Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
#427News reel: - Big company/person X is does beneficial thing Y HN: - It's just a PR stunt! - It's a ploy to leverage something else and make more profit! - It's so tiny that it doesn't even make a difference! If they REALLY cared they'd do A, B, C... - They're actually doing Y to accumulate Z for some nefarious purpose! - I once did some interaction with X or their products and it went poorly! - X has skeletons I, J, a…
I don't understand this critique. Corporate PR is largely propaganda. Our corporatist media isn't willing or able pursue actual journalism to find out the truth, so now we have lot's of people searching for answers on a forum that allows for free speech. If you don't like it, you should probably just stick to cable news.
Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
#428Earlier 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.
Ooh and stop mining Bitcoin
Actually, as part of "Electrify everything", it would probably be good to replace a significant chunk of the banking system with a cryptocurrency layer (maybe bitcoin, maybe not).
With green energy, digital gold is a lot more green than physical gold. Bitcoin is like electric cars – not super green right in this moment when the grid is still dirty, but all it takes to make it greener is to green up the grid.
Meanwhile the classical banking system: uses all forms of transport which green up slower (armored cars, planes, etc), requires crazy amounts of construction (I don't even want to guess how much cement has been used in the construction of physical banks all over the world), all those buildings use energy for AC/lighting/etc, require huge amounts of manpower to manage trust in the system (people definitely aren't green), and also need their own datacenters anyway. And I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, where as with BTC pretty much all consumption is baked into mining, which again just gets greener automatically as the grid gets greener. Nobody is running a Bitcoin mining operation off of diesel generators. If you did the math (impractical given the breadth of the existing banking system), I think you'd find Bitcoin is already far greener than the existing banking system, by a huge margin.
And cryptos like Ethereum have the potential to 10x/100x/1000x that with things like PoS vs. PoW as well as the fact that Ethereum smart contracts can not only replace banking but probably other industries as well, such as title companies and various other middlemen.
Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The low prices at Ikea and others definitely encourage over-consumption - buying a new table instead of restoring an old one for example This is never going to fly with regular folks, though. We could probably reduce pollution a ton if people started patching their clothes, but that's never going to happen either.
I think new clothes just needs to be expensive enough that patching is worth it
Okay so on things we are gatekeeping from the poor we have moved on to...
checks notes
Clothes?
Re: IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
#430I never understood why people hate IKEA. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized. But guess what, IKEA is a business responding to the needs of people. The negatives that are mentioned frequently are merely a symptom of our ever faster developing society. The people who complain are the same ones that just buy cheap crap from china without even thinking ab…
Also, the furniture market is just insane. If you want a chest of drawers, you either pay $100 for a cheap flat pack self-assembled one from IKEA and take it home today, or similar prices for a similar one online from Wayfair.com (a bit more of a gamble), or you pay over $1000 for something that won’t show up for 6 months. It’s bizarre that you can buy a brand new car with cash and take it home today, but the supply chain for wooden rectangles is extremely underdeveloped.