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Comment by loceng | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Almost everything I have in my house is Ikea, from the desk I'm typing this on (10 years old) and the cupboard next to it (12 years), to my 4 year old bed (had to buy a new bed frame when we moved in to this house because the divan couldn't fit up the stairs)

Aside from one wardrobe which I had to get rid of (it was 237cm -- too tall for this house, so I gave it to my parents), the only furniture I can think of that hasn't lasted is the stuff from places that wasn't Ikea.

I get the feeling that Americans don't rate Ikea as highly as Europeans for some reason, possibly because it's a foreign firm (thinking of popular american TV shows of the late 90s and early 00s showing people struggling with assembling flat pack furniture)

https://notesmatic.com/2016/12/challenge-of-culture-in-marke...

> When entering the US market, it faced a major challenge because the business model it had been using was not replicable in US. Soon IKEA realized that the local culture was a challenge and there was a definite need to adapt to it

Here in Europe it has a pretty bad name too. But I love it. Their furniture is very versatile, functional and easy.

Also, even though furniture snobs hate it, I love pointing out their KALLAX or BILLY units behind them in online meetings :D :D Then it's "oh yeah but this is my home office, it's not so important".

In my place literally all my furniture is from Ikea and I love it. I don't like spending much on it, and IMO the durability is really excellent. What really helps is that they sell cheap covers for my couches, so if I get bored of them or they get dirty I can just buy a new cover for 29 euros and it's like a brand new couch again!

furniture snobs are just a whole other level of snobbery. I once wandered into a designer furniture store and came out feeling like I had been programmed by a cult. Also felt poor after looking at the price tags. "that nightstand costs as much as a car? I'll take 3 !"

Asked around the office (mainly London based), 6 people like Ikea furniture, 1 person didn't.

All aggreed that the delivery service is rubbish.

Tiny sample

I was really happy with the delivery service here in Spain actually! They brought it all the way up to the apartment and they were quick and careful.

But yeah N=1 :)

The annoying thing about IKEA furniture, and that from competitors, is that all it takes is for a tiny piece of particle board to be damaged internally for the whole item to be useless.

Generally, while they are in one piece and not moved, they are fine. But trasnporting or disassembling this stuff is a risk. The tiny wooden pegs, plastic bits and agressive screws going straight into soft board can rip out chunks, snap off, etc. Good luck getting a replacement door, etc.

You can just go to any IKEA and buy a replacement part? Every single part they've ever sold is available at the replacement desk in their stores (at least here in Germany). Even individual screws, legs, etc. When I broke a door and one of the hinges of a kitchen cabinet, I just went to IKEA and bought a replacement door (of the exact same type) and replacement hinge) and replaced them.

Not available in the US. The only thing they will do is either sell you spare small parts or issue a refund.

I'm in the US. I have several times gone to an Ikea store with damaged parts and been able to obtain replacements, sometimes free of charge - including with one part of an entertainment center kit that got dropped on the front porch steps, breaking one panel clean in half and cracking another. They took it back, gave us another, and sent us on our way no questions asked.

I don't doubt you've had trouble, and I don't know what their website or otherwise remote customer service is like, but to say that the service is just not available at all in the US appears incorrect.

I find this odd, in Canada we can get all the replacement parts needed. Just may have to wait a bit but they have them.

You can also search for the serial number on eBay and typically find a compatible part.

In the UK you can get spare bits too.

> You can just go to any IKEA and buy a replacement part?

Assuming there is a store nearby and even that the company is still in business. It's vendor lock-in.

Meanwhile, my solid wood sideboard could be repaired by any competent cabinet maker, without needing specialist hinges or plastic brackets. Not that it is liable to fall apart as easily as particleboard & veneer.

Sorry, what?

IKEA can be repaired by any competent cabinet maker. IKEA doesn't use anything fancy and weird, all their stuff is standard or a slightly variation of standard and could easily be replaced by a standard one. In fact most of the IKEA stuff is so popular it has become standard.

IKEA sells both particleboard & veneer for their cheap/budget friendly stuff and hard pine/other wood for more expensive stuff.

You can't have cheap and solid wood, it's just too expensive.

Go down to the local wood shop and buy all the wood you need to make a sideboard and tell me how much it will cost. Certainly will be leagues higher then buying a particleboard & veneer version of the same thing.

> and hard pine/other wood for more expensive

Pine is a softwood.

What would prevent your competent cabinet maker from attaching a new hinge and door to an ikea product?

Goodness, I am a software developer, I don't have a woodworking shop but I'd be able to repair pretty much anything Ikea - epoxy, pva, some sawdust for filler (or woodfiller), buy particle boards with same/similar color melamine online.

Any novice woodworker/joiner should be able to fix IKEA w/o any parts from IKEA even.

Repairing a couch is not an option unless you're skilled in re-apolstering.

Well that goes for all couches, ikea or not, doesn't it? That wasn't the question here.

...but other couches are built to last, so repair is much less commonly needed.

How many years does it have to last, before it's "built to last?" I've seen lots of Ikea couches that have lasted a long time.

In broad strokes, Ikea furniture holds up well as long as the humidity and UV is low'ish. Don't leave it out in the open weather, let it get water-laden with humidity, or sit directly exposed to the sun anywhere, and the glues holding it together will generally last their lifecycle (about a decade or two), possibly longer if in an especially well-cared for environment.

With some practice, West System epoxy, filler and fiber glass can easily repair chips and chunks. It helps that I'm not fastidious about aesthetics, so lacking the laminate on top after a repair suits me. The little bits are more challenging to source if Ikea has stopped manufacturing or supplying them. I'm hoping 3D metrology and printing can help with that, so waste from people tossing out old furniture for want of a small part nearly goes away.

YMMV.

Ikea sells replacement parts online. Usually, all you need is their number code which you can find in the manual (or if your lost that in the pdf on their website).

I recently ordered a replacement door myself, just to make it look new again.

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.uk/news/business-55796429

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 numbers apart from connectors" to "everything can be replaced except for the two sides of the main body". And even those you can get by ordering a new cabinet without any doors or extras, since that's basically the sides + a number of shelfs.

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.

Why is throwing away the old one, and buying a new one seen as a solution? Like huh? We're talking about waste.

Besides the fact you can normally buy replacement from ikea (or ebay), most of the stuff is fixable via epoxy and wood sawdust(or even cardboard pieces as filler), wood filler accomplishes the task as well. Brass inserts (again epoxied) + machine bolts can fix up any holes/stripped wood screws. As a fast fix insert tooth picks in the hole along with PVA.

Of course in many cases is easier (faster/cheaper) to replace the entire 'thing', altogether.

But it's super easy to repair. Just glob some wood glue and it'll ooze deep into that particleboard. The edges of billy don't survive sliding, given, but some electrical tape for the finish and glue for the wood work well.

It's not like we buy them as show pieces.

>edges of billy don't survive sliding

ABS edging is cheap (like really cheap), can get a cutting tool for 10 euro, and glue the edge with double sided tape (or contact adhesive - more messy thought)

I bought almost all my IKEA furniture second-hand. Many of them were taken apart and re-built 3 or 4 times in the last 10 years. Most of them hold up really well.

I cannot confirm that IKEA furniture is not durable. It's mostly not hardwood, yes! Of course if you're not careful you can rip out a screw. But that screw or that board is usually easily replaced. And of course, IKEA also has cheaper and more expensive models, models that are not very robust, and models that are.

And not being hardwood is also good for the environment as hardwood takes much longer to regrow.

They have different quality levels in their products.

The IKEA kitchen island I have is made of solid wood and standard hardware. The top is butcherblock and can easily be resurfaced. This island will last many years.

The IKEA 'linmon' desk I have is laminated cardboard. The weight of my monitor causes the desk to bow. The surface has the durability of flat paint. My phone slipped out of my hand from 12 inches above the desk and put a 1/4 inch deep dent in it. I'm pretty sure if I squeezed it hard enough with my fingers, I could crush it.

Yeah I would argue with the disposability. I use it for many years. I have some Ikea stuff that's 40 years old. Granted, their current product line is not quite as durable but this is partially because they use less materials (hollow surfaces etc).

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.

Every single IKEA piece of furniture in my house (desks, tables, sofas, shelves...) is entirely "lossless assembly", although when moving I didn't have to put them apart down to individual parts because they're also designed for whole components to be (dis)assembled and reassembled quickly. I think I have like one piece of furniture that is not entirely lossless and that's the back panel on a closet that needs to be nailed (which provides diagonal constraint), which I've done three times over yet still has room for more.

Okay it's not grandma's stuff that's made of thick solid wood and lasts centuries, but it has really held up well to reasonable abuse.

Yep that's the BILLY that has the folding wood panel you have to nail down. The reason they fold it is to keep the package small. You can re-do it a couple of times if you put the holes in a different spot but it's not great. Especially the folding bit is just tape so it can tear easily.

It is exceptionally cheap though.

erhm... sorry... but IMHO nine years are "nothing". A good chair should last at least 50 years.

A good office chair should last 50 years? A dining room set, sure, but an office chair is closer to white collar work boots than traditional furniture.

A decade seems reasonable to be honest. In order to be comfortable and ergonomic for ~8 hrs a day the chair will inevitably have some soft components that wear out.

Um... yeah, I disagree. No cushioning is going to survive for 50 years, and something like an office chair should be rotated far sooner than that (or maintained with replacement cushioning/support) to keep the ergonomics intact. Especially for an office chair (assuming this is something like an 8-hr chair and not a short duration task chair).

Then be prepared to pay 10x the IKEA price.

Likewise I've had the opposite experience, and many variables to account for as to which is the norm; the type of furniture, the type of owner and environment it was used in and use profile, etc.

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 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 country were the gaskets manufactured in? What was the process used to extract the rare earths? Everything depends on everything else and consequences are pretty unknown.

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.

On the other hand, those extractors are operating on licenses issued by governments. So in principle, one could add that do their license, and they would just have to deal with it. A challenge is that the market is global, while licenses are given out by nations. So requires alignment of many nations for it not to be a competitive burden on a few producers.

Taxes are already on the government level, I'm not sure what other hand you're referring to here. Who would a corporation even pay the money to if it isn't enacted by a government?

I guess it depends on the 'who' in those places.

It's not hard to imagine a government rather fancying getting a tax receipt from extraction companies, particularly if it is seen as green. Who would presumably lobby rather hard against it. This suggests the absence of pricing at source is to some extent a result of successful lobbying.

The problem is exports; the government is already making money on extraction companies selling their goods abroad. If they burden them with extra taxes, that'll get translated to the price other nations pay, which will reduce exports, and thus reduce government's profit. In a competitive exports market, a country with environmental taxes will lose to the one without.

Sorry, how does a government bring in tax revenue off of exports? Tarrifs are levied on imports rather than exports.

Sure they would make less money off corporation taxes with lower exports, but as those receipts are generally low anyway the tradeoff going to carbon tax would likely be favourable.

Not directly off exports, but doing any kind of operation in a country involves government getting a cut of the profits via corporate taxes, laborers' income taxes, etc. All of these get smaller if the corporation sells less.

Until every country in the world has agreed upon doing that you still need to estimate CO2 when exporting and importing things from and to the common-carbon-price zone.

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.

Which was kind of my point. How can we internalize the externalities?

> Sounds exactly like the kind of problem

It didn't really work out so far, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about an emergency.

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.

Destroying old growth forests is still a bad idea even if you have enough energy to capture all the carbon.

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.

Fossil fuels are not the only thing we do that cannot be carbon neutral though, such as construction with cement.

Additionally, carbon capture does not necessarily mean we are burning "fossil" fuels. Carbon capture could be using the Sabatier process to create methane from the CO2 in the air, which you then use to power rocketships/jets/etc, which we are still not very close to electrifying.

We could turn the trees into furniture and surupticiously spread them out in buildings around the world. Hey wait a minute?

So the missing link would be a second page in the manual where the reverse path from furniture back to flatpack is described? A nightmarish challenge, definitely makes me the Ikea manual guy with the questionmark, ready to phone into the help line.

> to get a long term net effect we'd have to bury them about as deep as the fossils we are excavating.

Why? What is wrong with capturing carbon the way trees naturally do? (Honest question)

Trees are part of a closed cycle: eventually they burn or are decomposed biologically (fungi and animals). As far as I know, all the high quality fossil reservoirs we excavate have been accumulated in an exceptional era when the biological defense mechanisms of trees happened to have so much of an upper hand over all potential decompositors that their corpses basically stayed around forever. Imagine a C heap when for a while free() is a noop... (it has been fixed for quite a while now).

The closest thing we have today to those "eternal tree corpses" are peat bogs were decomposition is kind of broken even today (and guess who discovered that dried up peat can burn, even if it's a very dirty fire? Humans. We just love oxydating carbons).

I think they mean 'after the tree has been cut down or otherwise reached the end of its life'.

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?

The problem is that it's useless for sequestering carbon that's already in air, that we sourced from deep underground.

Yes, the obvious step would be to stop burning fossil carbon, it seems like a much more pressing issue than sequestering the one that is already in the atmosphere.

By now we need to do both, there is already too much carbon in the atmosphere. If you look at the IPCC projections, 1.5°C is only achievable with carbon capture of some sorts [0] (if at all). Research and development for this has to be pushed yesterday.

Though word is in the air that the previous assessments might have been very optimistic.. although that will probably only be discussed in 2022 when the 6th assessment report is to be published. Which presses the issue only further.

[0] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3...

People probably aren't going to be flying around in wood-powered passenger jets any time soon.

I mean sure, but a forest will still capture more carbon than a plain. And it provides many more advantages than just capturing carbon for the diversity of our ecosystem.

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.

> 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.

It's been 13 years now and nobody's done it, because that's a terrible idea. The reason lawyers exist is that all contracts have ambiguity and require a human to review and consider. All contracts have circumstances that aren't captured. Just ask the DAO folks.

Middlemen exist for a reason. Efficiency, conflict and ambiguity resolution, and so on.

Blockchains are only useful for things that are entirely captured within the blockchain. As soon as you interface the blockchain with the outside world you have to trust something to enter and capture that data accurately - garbage in, garbage out. Once you're trusting someone, you don't need a blockchain, just fire up and RDS instance and save everyone the headache.

For starters, I think you're underestimating how much of what we do in the modern world is entirely digital and therefore can be entirely captured in a blockchain. There are decentralized trustless platforms running on Ethereum right now. You can transact currency on a plethora of decentralized exchanges, without all the layers that doing so with an exchange of USD -> RMB requires today. There are pilot programs built around blockchain that allow people to sell excess energy production (e.g. with home solar) back to other people on the "grid" in an entirely decentralized way.

And with tokens that are tied to real-life things, the benefit is that once you've used real-world trust systems (e.g. real-life contracts / lawyers / courts / etc) to tie something to the blockchain, you can (going forward) hand everything over to the trustless and secure system. i.e. You tie your property to the blockchain once, and from then on you don't need to involve all those inefficient systems, you just transact the tied token directly on the blockchain.

Just because it hasn't been done successfully yet doesn't mean it's not viable. How long did the internet exist before [thing that is taken for granted on the internet now] was successful?

Finally, Ethereum launched in 2015, not sure where you're getting 13 years from.

But how else will people make money than in a global, decentralized pyramid/MLM scheme?

s/make/lose/

But I see your point.

We should make a pyramid/MLM scheme where you're promised rewards for planting trees, segregating waste, cleaning up in any potential wildlife habitats, and reducing/reusing stuff in general.

> even more in panic and hair-on-fire about environmental issues

Panic is rarely useful. It might lead you to move at high and low velocity.

that should be: high speed and low velocity.

Great example. Reminds me of Milton Friedman's "Nobody knows how to make a pencil" essay.

A lot of human progress is result of human actions but not planning. Centralized planning around "climate change" would 100% be a recipe for disaster and a monumental failure about which future generations will write for 100s of years just the way we talk about slavery today.

Your use of carbon makes my existence on the planet a bit risky and hence you should pay me some compensation. But how much ? That is an impossible task for anyone and not just for the centralized government systems but even for highly efficient private players looking at very small problems. This is something that even outright climate change deniers like me admit.

It comes down to you do whatever bare minimum "we" determine is necessary to do your part in this struggle, or we'll eventually go to war to hold the line if your practices unsustainablility outweigh the cost of war; arguably in globalised society you can and should use economic levers first.

There's a world of difference between Ikea particleboard crap and heirloom furniture - you can make quite useful and durable furniture from pine board; Ikea actually does (though they could stand to spend some time on the design, the IVAR system is BY FAR the worst storage related problem I've ever dealt with; tossed that into the fire and got Uline wire shelves instead).

Moving the lifecycle of a piece of furniture from 3-5 years closer to 20 is highly worth it; even if I no longer need it I prefer to leave it on the curb for someone else than have to shove it into the trash can. And these metal shelves will last longer than I will - and can move to the garage if I no longer need them.

I like Ivar ...

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.

Yup, very important point that IKEA has aligned with modern day living constraints and arguably modern day fashion. This highlights the issue of the Landlord-Rental complex that needs to be countered too. All a "fun" experiment but we must get these systems in check - we could all live like Kings and Queens in a sustainable world if only for organization and rallying resources towards so - against the status quo and those currently incentivized against such a system.

I buy utility furniture at the thrift store. When I'm done with it, it goes back to the thrift store :-)

it goes back to the thrift store

Last time I moved I found that thrift stores are very picky about what furniture they accept.

If I get it from the thrift store, it surely meets their criteria for donations. I'm a bit picky on what I select, too. For example, no upholstered stuff, because of possible bedbugs.

Take care of your furniture or give it away to those in need?

give it away to those in need?

Tried that as well. They took a dining table with a few scratches in it, but no charity I talked to wanted bookshelves or TV stands/media benches.

From a different point of view, I would say that I don't see their furniture as "designed to be disposable", more that there is good marked for re-use through other people.

Spotted a few comments from people saying they have had second hand items (3rd, 4th etc) - and I think that in my head is where my version of "disposable" has come from.

When I no longer want an Ikea product because it doesn't fit, or no longer needed - I will sell it online, and get a new one - for me I have "disposed of it" but actually its been "recycled" to someone that really wants it.

Anecdotally - I have never thrown away any IKEA furniture due to old age or defects. It's always been passed on, or I have received a new one. - Admittedly this is just my POV, and I fully understand people have their own experiences - but I would like to think that in some small part, I am helping with that sustainable process.

IKEA in this case, I am glad that they are at least trying to do something (again not saying other companies don't but we are in a thread about IKEA's recent work!) - and I would like to think that to round of the ring of sustainability that it isn't just the companies that need to input, its the people that use it too.

Maybe I am being too idealistic, but I will do what I can in my small little bubble to be part of that sustainable process!

I realise I got this far and didn't think about the point I was trying to make! - But yeah, from my perspective I don't feel like IKEA design it to be disposable, but I am sure other people have other experiences too :)

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 discussions) that claim to reuse IKEA furniture; it's completely contrary to my experience. My opinion of IKEA furniture is that it's single-assembly - trying to break it apart irreparably destroys it.

I conclude there must be either high variance in IKEA's production quality, or we're comparing apples to oranges. Maybe some IKEA products have more reassembly potential than others. Someone mentioned an office chair elsewhere in the thread - yeah, that obviously can last years and be moved, because it's made of metal and hard plastics. But most IKEA furniture I experienced is made of dried toilet paper glued with formaldehyde^W^W^W^W^W^Wmedium-density fibreboard and assembles destructively.

Not thought about the re-assembly side of things - most of the second hand items I have collected didn't need dismantling - they came as one unit. (At the cost of the annoyance of moving it as a single unit!)

I am sure there are different experiences out there, could also be the circle of friends that do a lot of IKEA "freecycling" meaning I do see a higher quantity of re-used items being moved about.

I know that depending on the type of item as well there is a build quality issue - like Kallax shelving, it is a little more sturdier than the slightly cheaper version, and given I started with Kallax, I have stuck with it - Same with the Billy book cases too!

Although, the Diam Cake you can get from IKEA... that 100% is not going to waste, and 100% no one is getting a "second hand" one from me... there will be none left ;)

But returning back! It could be Apples to Oranges, there are so many products, and in my experience I have seen people stick to the same grouping of products as well, which could see re-use more possible than say another grouping (for any number of reasons).

Who knows, tomorrow the shelf behind me might just fall apart and I will be back eating my own words :)

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.

Some regions are more humid, and the same particleboard that lasts decades dry will break down quickly.

I see a lot of classic examples of survivorship bias in this thread.

Seasoned IKEA customer here. They have two types of products, one type is durable and the other is not and it's pretty easy to tell the difference from the price. Desks and bookcases are good examples of the former.

They also have disposable desks and bookcases.

Look for furniture that will withstand someone leaning or sitting on it. The cheap designs are held together with cam-lock nuts and bolts or screws, and it's inevitable that at some point someone will lean on the desk and pull the screws through the particle board.

Furniture that will last longer has multiple fixings to keep it square, or diagonal cross-pieces (or a flat sheet).

This is going to last much longer:

    ..._____________
    ..._______•__•_|   
       \\   |      |
        \\  |      |
         \\ |      |
          \\|      |
           \|      |
            |      |

Than this:

     ..._____________
     ..._________•__|   
             |      |
             |      |
             |      |
             |      |
             |      |
             |      |

I’ve been using my disposable desk for 10 years now, and my disposable shelves for even longer than that. Not sure I’ve ever thrown away IKEA furniture, though I have sold some and given other items away.

If you compare Ikea furniture to the comparable items you get from Target or Walmart, Ikea is hands down far better quality. Sure it might not last generations, but it is affordable and built from basically sawdust so I have to imagine their 1% usage comes from simply the scale of their production rather than inefficiency or anything like that.

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.

A while ago I spent far too long trying to work out if carbon sequestration through wood (charcoal, in this case) was feasible.

The answer is, partly. We probably couldn't fix global warming, but we probably could negate a reasonable chunk of emissions.

https://concretecuts.xyz/articles/biochar/

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

Is there a silent /sarcasm tag at the end of this comment?

It doesn’t read as sarcasm to me. The bulk of the ideas seem “in the right direction”, just with a bunch of gaps and uncertainty. The gaps and uncertainty are where research and conversation live. I read the comment in that spirit.

It's carbon capture isn't it? Use fast growing wood, make furniture by gluing flakes together. If it gets tossed, it just sits underground.

Need to make sure it does not rot (releases methane), or get burned. And that the environmental cost of transportation does not outweigh the benefit. But otherwise it is a potential mechanism, I guess.

Assuming it does stay underground, instead of rotting away in a landfill. GGP said "non-compostable", but I presume they meant "not suitable for composting", and not "physically unable to decay".

My brilliant crackpot roommate told all of us that he's actually the one saving the planet when he prints a ton of paper and not recycle it, ten years back. We all looked at him weird but eventually I realized how right he was.

A lot of their furniture is made of materials like chipboard, which is made with waste byproducts and low quality leftovers.

This certainly can be more efficient and environment-friendly than using prime slow-growth oak (for example).

I wish this was extended to many other products. Automobiles for example, should incorporate the costs associated with poisoning our air (including EVs as rubber tyres shed microparticles).

A bottle of coke should incorporate the cost of fishing the plastic out of the ocean.

Tires and brakes are both emitters, admittedly with motor braking you probably emit less total brake dust in an EV in a comparatively heavy ICE car.

Also still included in an EV is the carbon cost of mining, refining and manufacturing:

- Metal parts

- Plastic parts

- Organic fabric parts (raising cattle, big cost. Pleather? Still costly, and now it's plastic too, can't win)

- Battery minerals and production

- Electronics manufacturing

- Glass manufacturing

I am still all for EVs mind you, hell yes. But they are a massively consumptive item.

Citation needed that wood based products are bad for the environment compared to say plastic. The alternative to IKEA crap is injection molded crap, so perhaps this is the better of the two evils.

Not to pile on to the anecdata here, but I've owned a lot of different Ikea furniture over the years, and in the words of (I think) Douglas Coupland it's "semi-disposable."

Much of it will last a lifetime as long as you never disassemble it or move it further than the next room. Some of it is more fragile than that. Very rarely something is more durable -- here's looking at you, Klippan!

> 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.

Why only the companies should be responsible?

I would say it's fairer to share the "blame" with everyone else. The consumers, the government, the whole society.

The resale value of my Ikea stuff was quite high. This doesn’t support your argument, at least for my region and IKEA.

Idea has levels of quality. But some must view it all as disposable and low quality because how else could they justify spending 3x or more at other furniture stores. Most shop at Ikea for affordability, style options, and a good return guarantee.

One factor missing from conversation is timescale.

Disposable? I've never had to throw away any IKEA furniture. These things can easily last 15 years.

15 years? My table is 90. My grandparents bought it used when they first moved together after their wedding. Hardwood and a bit of care once in a while (2-3 years, waxing) goes a long way.

Survivorship bias.

Most furniture from 30+ years ago is broken. The older it gets, the more likely it is to have been broken. For your grandparents (and the folks they passed it on to), it means: You were able to have space for the table all the years, and didn't move into a place where it didn't fit. It means it didn't have accidents. Do you have chairs that came with it - or did they break too (very common)? If you do have the chairs, are they sturdy enough for a child to climb on and wiggle in? (many aren't).

It means they didn't have a fire or break the table when moving it (if they moved over the years).

It means they could wax it and so could everyone else. It means they could do repairs when needed. It means that it didn't rot despite waxing.

It means that you (and/or other family members) also had a space for it: If you bought an old piece used, it meant that there was an avenue to sell it.

And a bunch of things like that. 90 year old furniture isn't the norm, and can hardly be used to verify that older things are made better (and besides, they had some cheap stuff too).

My experience with Ikea furniture is that they last - even abusive children. It is not Ikea's fault furniture is thrown away really.

Danish Design type of furniture is what breaks if you are not careful. I.e. slick nice looking chairs and what not.

who are the next largest furniture manufacturers, and how does Ikea's durability/sustainability match up with them?

Ikea doesn't compete with hardwood furniture... They compete with Wayfair, target, and Walmart furniture. Ikea builds a significantly better product with the same materials IMO.

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