How do you solve a problem like IKEA?
Fast furniture and the search for happy, greener homes
I am far from a Friends superfan, but there are two moments from the show I think of often. The first is the boys vs. girls quiz episode, when Monica and Rachel lose because they guess Chandler’s job is “transponster” (an answer I’ve frequently given about my own dads). The other is when Phoebe buys an entire Pottery Barn catalogue page for her apartment and tries to pass it off as vintage. I don’t know how deeply the decor dilemma registered when I watched it as a teen, but now for me it’s a lesson: taste is another luxury that can be bought.
Our homes are not verdicts on our worth or essential reflections of our selves, though it’s easy to think that. We’re trained to express our identity in what we choose to buy. It’s fine to want our homes to be comfortable and functional and even pretty, but sometimes we get caught up in status, comparison, or everyday consumerist self-soothing. Our homes can be just another trend treadmill. In Eula Biss’s thought-provoking Having and Being Had, her friend looks around her apartment and asks, “Is this what we do now? We just keep earning money and replacing this stuff with better stuff?”
I bring this up because in this era of Instagram and influencers, Wayfair and Target chic, Zara and H&M home lines, when every meeting and social event comes with the intimate backdrop of our home, having a finely curated on-trend space seems more of a pressure than ever. Plus, when we’re all trapped in our homes, we’re desperate to look at SOMETHING, ANYTHING different, and the lure of new props and sets for our tiny lives is particularly strong. Though I work hard at my consumerist deprogramming, I am not immune, either, having recently invested too much of my one wild and precious life browsing throw blankets.
We’ve already talked about the environmental impact of fast fashion, but what about all of the other stuff? The couches and rugs, the bedspreads and mugs?
According to the EPA, Americans throw out 12 million tons of furniture annually — up from 2 million in 1960. Add to that another 2.1 million tons of small appliances, 5.3 million tons in large appliances, and 3.4 million tons of carpeting and rugs, and you start to get a sense of the problem. As wise FMFP readers know, disposal is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to environmental impact. For example, IKEA is the third-largest consumer of wood in the world — imagine all those trees ground into sawdust to make another Billy, another Malm. Our flimsy furniture comes with human rights costs too: your Wayfair desk is cheap because someone in Vietnam earned $2.50 an hour making it.
IKEA, of course, isn’t really the problem: it’s a symptom. The problem is globalization, insufficient wages, racial and gender wealth gaps, rampant consumerism, and more. Yes, IKEA’s stuff can be flimsy, but it isn’t always — I’ve had my furniture from grad school for 15 years now and expect to have it much longer. No one company is responsible for our conflation of cheap and disposable.
IKEA is also doing some good work, setting ambitious targets and approaching their environmental impact from a number of angles: they now have a sellback program for used goods, 97% of their wood is FSC certified (though they were linked to some illegal logging in the Ukraine last year), cotton is sourced for sustainability, some products are made from recycled plastic, and they’ve even introduced plant-based options for their famous hot dogs and meatballs. If your product needs a new part, you can request it from customer service, and the company is considering making more replacement parts available — something that in this day and age passes for radical. While none of this is a reason to go out and buy a bunch of new stuff you don’t need (the FMFP golden rule: the greenest thing is the one that already exists), better quality affordable goods are useful in the consumer ecosystem — more environmentally responsible products shouldn’t just be for the wealthy.
Of course, IKEA and all the other fast furniture and decor outlets still have a serious environmental imprint. So how can we have functional, pleasing homes with minimal planetary destruction?
Clean up your act.
I, like Jillian Jiggs, love projects and hate tidying. Mess inevitably follows. But my living space always looks instantly better if I tidy up, and the pandemic has forced me to be more disciplined in my tidying. For maximum effect, get as many things as possible out of sight and off your surfaces and follow with a good dust and/or scrub down.
Rearrange.
When you’re sick of looking at your space (and who isn’t at this point?), don’t underestimate the potential of moving around some furniture, swapping some art, or rearranging the stuff on open shelves. Your novelty-seeking brain (and your bank account) will love it.
Sideline some stuff.
Part of the reason furniture showrooms look so good? They’re not filled with the miscellanea of living. You can chase that sparse Instagram aesthetic without buying a single thing. If you get rid of a bunch of stuff in the process, do it responsibly.
Buy used and/or made to last.
If you really do need something new, set up an alert on Kijiji, browse other secondhand sites, watch for estate sales (which you can find online with sites like MaxSold), and check your local Buy Nothing groups and thrift shops first. What you need may already exist. While transporting assembled furniture isn’t always easy, it’s often doable with a little creativity.
If you’re looking for a piece you’ll use a long time, try to buy quality and as locally as possible. Buying locally made furniture means avoiding the ethical morass of the global supply chain and also not contributing to illegal deforestation. You’ll probably also get something much more durable.
Demand better from manufacturers.
Like a company’s aesthetic but not their ethics? Write emails and include ethical/environmental qualms in your product reviews. Systemic change is massively effective, and it means the burden of environmental responsibility is no longer unfairly shunted onto individuals.
Support right to repair legislation.
In recent good news, the EU just passed legislation that requires appliances and electronics to be repairable for up to ten years. Spare parts must be available (if only to authorized repair people in some cases), appliances must come with manuals, and they must be able to be taken apart with regular tools. The next step would be to label products with how long the can be expected to last, which would encourage producers to make more durable products and make it easier to invest in a truly long-lasting product. Planned obsolescence could become obsolescent! While this legislation is currently limited to electronics, I’d love to see the principles applied more broadly. What’s the lifespan on a Billy vs. a bookcase from your local carpenter? The carpenter can probably tell you; IKEA not so much.
Embrace imperfection.
In the age of FaceTune and Instagram filters showing your life in all its glorious imperfection is a radical act. As so many of us have become amateur photographers, we’re eager to show not just ourselves and our homes, but our entire lives, in their best light, both literally and figuratively. And while I love trying to craft a pleasing Instagram photo, or capturing a beautiful moment I want to preserve, I also plan to share more of that behind-the-scenes content: the mess in the kitchen, the misshapen cake, the in-progress reality of living. The illusion of perfect just feeds the consumer machine.
Recently I posted a photo of a corner of my kitchen, the light falling across a shelf of jars, and a friend told me she thought it was beautiful. And I appreciated the compliment because everything in that photo was bought secondhand: the shelf from Craigslist, the basket from the curb, the hanging basket from the Burlington Reuse Centre (RIP), the rolling pin from my grandmother, even the jars themselves were likely all rescues. It was assembled with time, patience, luck, and maybe even taste — the kind that’s not for sale at Pottery Barn.
TL;DR
Fast furniture and decor have a serious eco impact; for example, IKEA is the third-largest consumer of wood in the world.
Before you buy, try rearranging some furniture, removing some stuff, and giving everything a good old-fashioned spring clean.
When buying new stuff for your home, buy used and/or made to last.
To scale up your impact, support right to repair legislation and demand better quality and environmental accountability from manufacturers.
Wins of the Week
“The social cost of some things is their very cheapness.” — Eula Biss, Having and Being Had
This week, we sing a praise chorus for the emerging crocuses and for:
Alyce and Natalie, who have acquired some garden space at their buildings and will be putting seeds to soil.
Frannie, who refilled her toiletries at the zero-waste store.
Angelina, who set up a fish tank for her daughter and got almost all of the bits secondhand.
I love all of your wins like I love spring flowers, which is to say ECSTATICALLY. Please send me more or bring them to our FB group, where some very fine folks are sure to give you virtual high-fives.
Also, this week I’d love to know: what was the last thing you bought for your home that was a great purchase? What thing have you regretted? Leave a comment here, hit reply, or take it to the FB group to discuss. If you find this content useful, please do share it with people who want to make their lives a little bit greener.
I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, and until then may you find pockets of beauty amidst the dead leaves and in your own perfectly imperfect homes.
xo
Jen
Five Minutes for Planet is written by me, Jen Knoch, and edited by Crissy Calhoun. Opening photo by by Liana Mikah on Unsplash.