Sorry but do you find this ends up being wasteful at all? I don't know how many of/how much these items can be reused, but it feels like it would promote far faster consumption than ownership.
Um, they're not throwing it out. Someone else uses it afterwards.
But this illustrates exactly the problem. "If you're careful" -- meaning you wouldn't want the average one you see. Meaning there's going to be considerably more waste when people have to buy second-hand than if they just kept their own that much longer.
I agree that it would be more efficient if people kept their sofas for a decade, but they don't, and me buying the sofas they don't want is a better option than them ending up on a trash heap. Plus, I'll probably keep them for ten years. I buy high-end furniture second-hand so I can do exactly that, rather than getting a new Ikea piece of junk that falls apart in a couple of years.
I suppose the ideal scenario would be for manufacturers not to make rubbish and for people to be able to afford good furniture that lasts for decades, but we don't live in that world.
Its not an either or, you can buy second hand and keep your stuff longer.
This is about purchasing, if you're purchasing 2nd hand you do have to be careful because you don't have the same rights etc. The "average" may be perfectly fine, just like the average second hand car is fine. I think you're reading too much into "being careful", that's all.
The other reason is, if everyone just "updates" stuff for no other reason than "because they want to", then that's obviously going to tend to cycle through products more rapidly than if people didn't just "update" on a whim, even if the second-hand-ness wasn't an issue.
I must be a sucker, because I've been carrying some of it around for close to a decade...