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IKEA to buy back used furniture in recycling push

312 points by devy 6y ago

robin_reala 6y ago
This is part of the IKEA push towards a circular economy. There was another article specifically about that at Fast Company earlier this year: https://www.fastcompany.com/90512150/can-the-furniture-industry-end-waste-by-going-circular-ikea-wants-to-find-out https://www.fastcompany.com/90512150/can-the-furniture-indus...
- milkey_mouse 6y ago
  Something about renting furniture doesn't sit right with me (pun intended). I'd much prefer to be able to sell it back for a fraction of the original cost than to have to pay a monthly fee for my table.
  - netsharc 6y ago
    People rent furnished apartments (indeed airbnb has offers where you rent by the month). Apparently it makes financial sense for some people, e.g. digital nomads. A guy I know says he just packs his belongings into his SUV and he's free to move from airbnb to airbnb, negotiating a good price for them (e.g. staying in summer vacation apartments during winter time).
    - a9h74j 6y ago
      Also, have you seen any international homefinding shows on cable? AFAIK in some South American countries buying furnished houses and flats is a common practice. Presumably there is judgment involved in knowing what to upgrade before going on market, but this is also true of other upgrade tradeoffs such as with kitchens and bathrooms.
  - nicbou 6y ago
    It's the idea that you pay your whole life for a bunch of things, but don't own any of them. If you lose your income, you lose your car, your computer, your software, your furniture etc.
raister 6y ago
Should we mount it backwards or oddly and then provide disassemble instructions?
chrisseaton 6y ago
People hate on Apple here for being unrepairable... but really Ikea is the best example of the worst kind of building-to-be-disposable. Furniture like a simple table should last you a lifetime, and last your children a lifetime beyond that. You should be able to repair and fix damage. Most furniture can't even become obsolete for technical reasons. Instead Ikea use veneers and crumbling particle materials so you can't fix it at all. Many people say you essentially can't move Ikea furniture between houses because you can't dismantle it and if you tried to it'd simply fall apart. Ikea was a terrible thing to happen to furniture - disposable single-use furniture - madness.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Some of my IKEA bookshelves withstood at least two moves, retaining a reasonable shape. Though yes, particle board is not the sturdiest of materials, and is harder to amend than wood. My IKEA dinner table is solid wood, though, perfectly repairable if need be; same with chairs.
  - mszcz 6y ago
    Same here. When I was in college I bought the shitiest, cheapest IKEA shelves (LACK?) basically made from cartboard that's mounted on a steel rack. They survived three moves, no damage whatsoever. I'm sure that this does not apply to every piece they make, but I wouldn't shit on every thing they make. Another thing I like about IKEA is that I can get parts for most of the things that tend to break. My friend had a custom made kitchen. One of the cabinet hindges broke but the contractor was nowhere to be found to replace it, and he had to scour the internets for that specific replacement. If one of the hindges in my IKEA kitchen breaks I'm sure I'll be able to replace it, probably at no cost, because it's still being made and probably will still be made in 10 years.
    - dagw 6y ago
      If one of the hindges in my IKEA kitchen breaks I'm sure I'll be able to replace it, probably at no cost, because it's still being made and probably will still be made in 10 years. Don't be too sure of that. IKEA has greatly sped up their 'upgrade' cycle lately. Somethings are around unchanged year after year, but more and more things aren't. I've had several cases where I came back to IKEA 2 years later and wanted to expand or replace a thing in a furniture series only to find it discontinued.
nikanj 6y ago
IKEAs biggest competitor is used IKEA. The downside of selling an incredibly amount of identical items is the eventual saturation of the market. I think it's a brilliant move to ensure both the seller and the buyer of the furniture now have to stop by IKEA, the promised land of impulse buys. And paying for the furniture in IKEA vouchers means the real re-purchase cost for IKEA is even lower.
- echelon 6y ago
  > IKEAs biggest competitor is used IKEA. How is that even possible? Ikea furniture is particle board and frequently doesn't survive being moved a single time.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I’ve done it, up and down a few different staircases and across the country in a container. Tighten a few screws and the cabinets and drawers seem to work year after year.
  - dagw 6y ago
    That's a fairly recent development. IKEA still has a fair bit of pretty solid furniture, and much of their older stuff will last for decades.
    - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
      Even the newest IKEA furniture survives moves just fine. We have been selling and buying used IKEA furniture on an Austrian second hand market for the last 5 years and generally no issues. Also the things that often break you can get fixed for free at the store if needed. I think the idea that IKEA furniture does not last is a result of IKEA being very transparent about how the furniture is made.
    - sgift 6y ago
      The myth of all "new" IKEA things being shit is as old as I remember. People said the same thing 20 years ago and when I asked my parents they told me people also said it 40 years ago. Each time IKEA changes to a different production method the old "shit" gets magically elevated to 'very good and far better than their new things'. If that trend was real most new IKEA furniture should fall apart before you assemble it.
say_it_as_it_is 6y ago
Have you ever tried to move Ikea furniture? It falls apart so easily. Recycling makes sense if there's a market for broken particle board, because that is what will arrive.
- cannedslime 6y ago
  This only makes sense if you have a total disregard for the ecological effect of such a greed oriented consoomer model. This is about selling more products, there by impacting the environment more than selling less, better quality products.
- avh02 6y ago
  anecdotal: multiple times (the same item moving 2-3 times), with 100% success. Almost damaged a joining part once, but that was our own fault for not completely disassembling out of laziness.
mixedbit 6y ago
IKEA should make it easy to buy replacement parts for their furniture. Currently even for models still in sale it is usually impossible to get parts. You can go to an IKEA store 'used' section, if they happen to have this model returned by some customer, they will sell you parts, but most likely you will return empty-handed. Recycling large furniture, such as sofas, just because they have one tiny part responsible for folding broken, is not really an eco friendly way to go.
- avh02 6y ago
  I don't know if they have every single part, but some IKEAs have vending machines with spares of at least the common parts.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  > Recycling large furniture, such as sofas, just because they have one tiny part responsible for folding broken is not really a eco friendly way to go. How is that any different for large furniture from larger vendors like Macys?
  - zensavona 6y ago
    Large vendors like Macys generally sell furniture which can be moved or disassembled without breaking said furniture.
  - pfranz 6y ago
    While not necessarily a store like Macy's themselves, I know I've reached out to manufacturers when I needed a replacement handle or foot that was lost or broken. Heck, often right inside the package you'll see a piece of paper that says "STOP! Do not return to the store! Call us"
  - mixedbit 6y ago
    Not sure about Macys, it doesn't operate in my country, but smaller furniture makers commonly use off-the-shelf mechanisms. For example, there are a couple popular spring mechanism for folding sofas, so if your sofa breaks, you can easily buy a replacement even if the furniture manufacturer is already out of business. IKEA has all these mechanisms custom.
dbuder 6y ago
How about you pay tax IKEA
lnsru 6y ago
It’s a seriously evil plan. Used old IKEA furniture was made from wood and had some level of quality. These things could last decades. Current new things there are made from paper!!! I manage to damage these new things while assembling. New IKEA things can’t be moved, because assembling and disassembling them does not work anymore. It’s a great decision to destroy old used things, so they disappear from secondary market and IKEA can sell more of the paper trash. Edit: paper furniture isn’t new and secret. Old article about it: https://gizmodo.com/and-now-ikea-is-making-sofas-out-of-paper-1706964295 https://gizmodo.com/and-now-ikea-is-making-sofas-out-of-pape...
- cannedslime 6y ago
  Exactly!
- chpatrick 6y ago
  They still have the real wooden furniture though. You don't have to buy the cheap paper ones.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    And they make it very clear what things are made of in the meterials section. Most retailers don't
  - lnsru 6y ago
    Same model of Kallax shelf now is made from paper. Price is even higher. I have older wooden models. The new one has even slightly different size. I was taken by surprise.
    - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
      Kallax was never made from "wood". The new one is quite study particle board filled with honey comb paper, the old one was very thin MDF with carton spacers. I have both an old expedit and a new kallax and there is no noticable difference. The main downfall of both is the coating with is thin and easy to destroy.
cannedslime 6y ago
Here is an even better idea: Stop making poor quality products with a low lifespan. Furniture used to be airlooms not trash.
stinos 6y ago
This reads like a joke: By making sustainable living more simple and accessible, Ikea hopes that the initiative will help its customers take a stand against excessive consumption this Black Friday and in the years to come If you want to solve excessive consumption, you should do that exactly, which means tackling the problem itself and somehow achieving that people reduce the amount of things bought. Offering recycling on the other hand doesn't really do that - or at least, I am not aware of a mechanism psychological or otherwise which makes consumers buy less because of recycling. And even if it does isn't it still a band-aid solution, and you're still not dealing with the root cause? Moreover, it does seem recycling is a nice way both for IKEA and customers to buy themselves the comforting (but fake) feeling of doing something sustainable while at the same time keeping things going as usual. Or who knows, even increasing 'hey I can recycle this so doesn't matter if I buy more, I'm still doing my thing for the planet'.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Yeah. Recycling is just a crappy band-aid. I finally realized that when I imagined our modern consumption as a pipeline: PRODUCTION CONSUMPTION RAW =====*=============*=========> LANDFILL MATERIALS That's our economy in a nutshell: an exponentially growing process that turns raw resources into trash. Now add in recycling: RECYCLING (small %) /--------------------------\ | PRODUCTION CONSUMPTION | RAW v=====*============*=======^=> LANDFILL MATERIALS Since no recycling is perfect, all you do is take some (often small) bit of resources and let it loop around the pipe once, maybe twice, before it gets used up to the point of being non-recyclable. It only delays the inevitable. Given that the pipeline grows exponentially, that small loop there pretty much doesn't matter. That's why Reduce is the most important of the three Rs.
  - stinos 6y ago
    The 'small %' and amount of times something can be recycled does depend on the material involved though. So while typical plastics are hard to recycle and a lot of it doen't even get sorted and hence goes straight to landfill, materials like steel and glass do much better. Moreover IIRC recycling steel even needs less energy than producing it from raw materials.
Kosirich 6y ago
They should then return them - fully assembled - to the returns desk where they will be checked and the final value agreed. Fully assembled? Will they be ok with me disassembling the furniture for transport and then assembling it in front of the return desk?
- silly-silly 6y ago
  Hope you kept those instructions ;)
lcamach84 6y ago
This reminds me moves in the fast fashion business were you can dispose your clothes and receive vouchers. The consumer feels good because he is caring for the environment and the store can keep selling more stuff.
glaberficken 6y ago
I think most of the comments so far are focusing on the lack of durability of some items in the catalog, but are failing to see that overall there is in fact a lot of 2nd hand buying and selling going on with items generally in good condition. Over the last 15years I have bought (and sold on) a lot of 2nd hand IKEA furniture. (In fact looking at my house now, I can only see 2 or 3 items that were bought new and the rest are 2nd hand and in excellent condition. There is a very very active market. My daughter's toddler size bed was bought 2nd hand and moved on to the next parent still in remarkably good condition after she wouldn't fit in the bed anymore. I think this is more of a classic "kill the 2nd hand marked" move.
- bestham 6y ago
  In Sweden it is free to sell IKEA items on Blocket, the Swedish equivalent to Craigslist. The fee for the listing of IKEA items is paid for by IKEA. I believe that IKEA are well aware that they have to cater for a 2nd hand market and find solutions to the "last mile" problem in order to be taken seriously when talking about sustainability. They are on it. If they succeed is another matter.
  - mongol 6y ago
    That is an interesting move. High resale value usually also translates to higher first sale value. Compare with cars, for example. For something like furniture, the expectation is that they should last quite long. If IKEA can promote that they indeed do, it provides an edge when people are looking to buy new.
    - anticristi 6y ago
      I honestly don't buy the "we want more sustainability" BS. They clearly want to increase rotation of furniture, so that the first hand market -- where Ikea makes real money -- increases. An honest ad would be scripted as follows: "Tired of your yellow lamp? Buy a shiny new blue one and get rid of the yellow one without feeling guilty."
t-writescode 6y ago
Okay, so everyone here seems to be complaining about the quality of Ikea furniture. I'm very confused. This has definitely not been my experience. I have a television entertainment center setup that I've had for about 9 years and it's still a great piece of furniture. I have 2 kallax bookcases that are still working pretty great (though they are wobbly, but you're supposed to put supports on the back wall, anyway); and, I have a bed that I bought from them that has been working amazingly for probably 7ish years at this point. That's been the only real problem piece of equipment, one because a piece went missing during a move and the other because it has to be completely disassembled during a move and that tends to weaken it a bit. Otherwise, my equipment from Ikea has been just fine over all. I'm even still using some of those junky $10 end tables for various things. Has something more recently happened? Or have I just gotten lucky? Or?
- thrav 6y ago
  I finally got to the bottom of this, after moving in with my wife. I never owned IKEA furniture, but inherited some of hers. Her big chest of drawers wobbled, and some of the drawers were blowing out the bottom. To her, and to anyone else, this is a shit piece of furniture. The truth is that it’s largely operator error. “High quality” furniture is almost impossible to fuck up. It’s preassembled and built like a tank. IKEA furniture is what the owner makes it. If the owner builds it well, and keeps the screws tight, and doesn’t overstuff it — it’s brilliant stuff, and will last a long time. If the owner does a half ass job putting it together, and lazily tightens the screws, and expects it to stay good forever with zero maintenance, it will devolve into crap. You could find an analogy between Mac vs. Linux here somewhere — though, it’s not perfect. Anyone who thinks IKEA is anything less than an industrial design marvel should go buy a few things there. Having done so recently, my perspective has completely shifted, and I actually love IKEA.
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    There are some Ikea products that are difficult to assemble in a lasting way. They are the exception though, and they're always the cheapest things. The smallest Lack coffee table (€10 or so) is assembled with double-ended screws from the legs into the tabletop. There's no way it can take any sideways stress, e.g. by someone leaning or standing on it. A child falling onto the table can break it. The larger Lack coffee table has the same legs, but adds a thin shelf for additional structure. If the shelf is loaded with a few books, it bows after a while. (I have this table.) There are similar problems with the €10 metal furniture.
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dirtyid 6y ago
Buy wood or metal pieces if you want IKEA purchases to last. I appreciate how IKEA iterates and value engineers the hell out of their products. Though ultimately if they care about sustainability, they need to settle on a series of perennial designs and have a viable parts system to support repairs.
shocks 6y ago
Lots of complaints here about IKEA furniture durability. My house is full of IKEA furniture and so far none[1] of it has fall apart. I think these tips can go a long way: - use proper tools instead of the cheap tools that come with the product - if you use a power tool on a screw, only use it for 95% of the task. finish the job with a hand-tool or you will do damage. - do not over-tighten things which screw into wood - metal into metal? LOCTITE. - you're really not going to disassemble that coffee table or small check of draws, so just use a bit of wood glue The great think about most IKEA furniture (or more generally, wood furniture) is that you can modify/fix it when it breaks. Good luck fixing those broken welds on your metal chairs! (1): Okay so my Lack coffee table fell apart, but it's also ~£5. I repaired it with wood-glue and masking tape, good as new, then gave it away for free on FreeCycle.
- memsom 6y ago
  It's generally great. The only thing we have that was a disaster is a wardrobe with mirrored doors. The doors are too heavy for the fittings and they basically sheared off on one side. Fixing is really hard because the door weighs too much and so is brutal on anything I've had a go at.. and being made from fibreboard, the structure is sawdust very easily. Maybe we will be able to recycle it. That would be pretty nice.
- baryphonic 6y ago
  Entirely agree. I've assembled loads of IKEA furniture over the years and have only rarely had quality issues. IKEA uses a lot more solid wood these days than compressed particle board, and is thus not bad. The only issue I've seen (which IKEA has attempted to remedy in its more recent iterations) is that the bottoms of some of the drawers in a chest of drawers will "bow" down under load. I've had mass-produced furniture from major brands known for quality, I've had hand-made wood furniture from NC, I've had big-box store self-assembled furniture and I've had IKEA furniture. Hand-made furniture can't be beat, but IKEA really is second best in my experience.
  - mauvehaus 6y ago
    I build furniture professionally, and I agree. IKEA stuff has been engineered to within an inch of its life to hold up for a reasonable length of time while being made of the lightest possible materials. A lot of other factory made furniture is built starting from some vestige of traditional joinery, and then cheapened until it hits a price point. The construction is appalling. I don't expect mortise and tenon face frames, but pocket screws would be a much better solution than a couple of pneumatic nails, which do nothing to stabilize the case and can't be driven back in when they pull out under racking forces. At that point, the whole frame has to come off, and since the rest of the piece is as cheaply built, it's anybody's guess whether it'll hold together long enough to put the face frame back on. The thinness of veneers on the tops of things that look like solid wood is a crime too. Most pros do the bulk of their stripping chemically, which doesn't risk damaging the veneer, but you usually have to do at least a little sanding, and it doesn't take much to find out what lies beneath. The result is that you can refinish a piece once. Just like in software (which was my first career), doing repair/maintenance can be a real eye-opener. If you like the look of IKEA, it's generally a good compromise between cost and durability. EDIT: I should probably add that, in fairness, IKEA stuff , at least the particleboard or honeycomb cardboard stuff, is completely unrefinishable. I haven't seen any of their solid wood stuff come in for repair, but I'd take my chances on that if somebody wanted to pay me to.
theshrike79 6y ago
The thing about IKEA stuff is that even if they're made of "cardboard", they still fit perfectly well with more expensive hardwood or design pieces. Other cheapo brands LOOK cheap, IKEA doesn't.
Ensorceled 6y ago
When I moved in with my GF, I wanted to get rid of my IKEA furniture (table&chairs, couple of chests of drawers, etc) so I called a place that takes furniture donations, cleans it up and gives it to needy families. When they heard it was IKEA the guy said it was more trouble than it was worth for them because they end up throwing it out. When I said "no problem, I'll break it up for kindling for my dad" he immediately said, "Wait! It's wood! Yeah, we'll happily take that."
robertakarobin 6y ago
Just want to chime in that I, too, am mystified by the Ikea hate. I've spent all of my 30+ years living with Ikea furniture. I'm writing this from an Ikea kitchen cart that has become my primary workspace. I remodeled my kitchen last fall with Ikea cabinets -- and was able to do almost the entire installation myself. I've never had a serious problem with anything from them. The same cannot be said most of the furniture we've gotten from other places. The expensive, fancy-shmancy reclaimed wood dresser and nightstand my wife bought from some other chic retailer has been repaired about 4000 times.
- II2II 6y ago
  I recently visited an Ikea store, and most of the furniture they had on display did not resemble the type of furniture that I associate with Ikea (which is cheap, wood, self-assembled kits or modules that are easy to repair or disassemble for moving). Their offerings have changed a lot over the years, perhaps their show rooms vary according to location, and maybe people are choosing what to buy based upon different criteria these days.
  - asdff 6y ago
    They sell quite a lot of solid wood furniture.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I think a lot of people only experience ikea through the absolute cheapest tier of their products. I actually like this stuff because it tends to be super light, making it ideal for the phase of life where you move to a different apartment every year or two. stuff inevitably gets damaged during a move anyway, so I mostly have cheap furniture that I don't care about. even with the cheapest stuff, I find a little care goes a long way. my cheap ikea bed frame has been moved and reassembled twice now and it still holds a mattress off the floor just fine.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  I don't get it either. In my eyes, they are an example of how good engineering combined with scale makes our lives better. Their stuff is exactly as good as it needs to be. If you were to cut it up and look inside, you'd be shocked how cheap the materials are (big parts of the LACK are literally made of cardboard), but in my experience, you don't notice this in everyday use, and that's the really important part. That's good engineering vs. the medieval approach of just throwing a lot of wood at it until it's definitely enough. Combine it with scale, and the result is me being able to furnish my entire apartment for the price that I'd pay for a single piece of "quality" furniture. My desk (where I shelled out for the slightly more expensive "higher quality" version with a 25? year warranty) and kitchen countertop look like new despite heavy use. Will everything survive a move? Maybe not. That's why I plan to sell to the next tenant what they want to keep, from the rest dump (recycling or waste-to-energy, not landfill) whatever breaks, is not practical to dis- and reassemble, or doesn't fit the new apartment, and then buy new IKEA furniture that actually fits (and have it delivered and assembled by IKEA for probably not much more than the cost of moving "good" furniture).
AstroJetson 6y ago
I have 19 Ivar units, with about 4 - 6 shelves each that have lasted for years (15 in a prior location, 6 here). They are in good shape, show no sign of bowing / slumping. They are made from recycled wood that has been glued to make the uprights and shelves. If you are willing to "toss the pile" you can find shelves that are free of major knots and will look nice. My workbench is a drop leaf table (only drops on one end h that was designed for a kitchen table. Solid as a rock and solid pine. My only regret is not buying more of the wide drawers that were available in the early 2000'. It's hard to find ones that fit exactly in the Ivar units.
technotarek 6y ago
Buy vintage. Solid wood cores, from the 50s-70s. That’s as green as you’re gonna get.
- the_only_law 6y ago
  Out of all the furniture I've purchased, solid vintage stuff from thrift stores are both top in quality and prices
9erdelta 6y ago
Brilliant! My dream along the same lines would be for Amazon to buy back boxes and packing material.
fortran77 6y ago
I wish the companies that sold "mattresses by mail" would have a program to recycle your previous mattress. Our town is seeing an uptick in abandoned/dumped mattresses, and the theory is it's from the internet mattress business.
peterwwillis 6y ago
I used to buy a lot of Ikea furniture (and take a lot of free Ikea furniture that ends up on curbs in big cities around moving season). Then I learned how much cheaper, modular, and more robust your furniture can be if you invest in some hand tools and built it yourself. You have a higher initial outlay, but the results last longer, can be repaired much easier, as well as broken down and repurposed. Most furniture can be assembled with a cheap hand saw and chisels, or if you're lazy, skilsaw, drill, drill bit set, and screws. I don't know that i'll ever buy a piece of furniture again unless it's second-hand and deeply discounted. There's so much good shit out there already.
kumarvvr 6y ago
At one level down, this is a fundamental problem with Capitalism itself. It expects companies to grow forever, and thus they have to come up with ways to reduce the working life of stuff they make. Imagine if we made furniture with mostly good, strong metal. They would last lifetimes, but Ikea, as a company would probably stagnate after a while. I shop a lot at Ikea too, but usually take care to purchase their stuff that's made with metal. They make a lot of those and those are very durable, if not a bit costly (in India)
- yohannparis 6y ago
  I bought a metal bed frame from IKEA 10 years ago, it has been with me trough seven moves across North America. Works has new and only needs 8 screws.
- Jwarder 6y ago
  The flip side to that idea is that consumers choose to buy this limited lifespan furniture. IKEA isn't tricking people in an effort to grow forever; they are just producing what people want.
smileysteve 6y ago
As someone in an American apartment building; I am saddened by the crap thrown into our dumpster; especially with Craigslist and Goodwill. I regularly save "decent" pieces from the dumpster to take to Goodwill. I have an unbroken, framed, mirror in that pile now.
bettyx1138 6y ago
imagine the line you'd have to wait in to do the returns. no thanks.
jdmg94 6y ago
IKEA has to be one of the worst companies, their furniture doesn't meet the stability requirements and there have been myriad of cases where IKEA furniture crushed a child to death. On top of that IKEA has been known to buy ilegal wood from reservations n Romania and other parts of the world. There's an episode of Netflix's "Broken" that goes more into detail. Fuck IKEA
- SahAssar 6y ago
  I agree that IKEA has done a lot of wrong, but calling them one of the worst companies is a bit much. Are you comparing their wrongs to stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster and finding them equal or worse?
kirillzubovsky 6y ago
I think that's smart of IKEA if they can get the economics to work, but they might be way late to this game. We just "upgraded" our house with a bunch of second-hand IKEA furniture, buying their typical drawers and bookcases for $20 each using Facebook marketplace. Considering that buying a new piece would be $200, and a used one is $20 and already assembled, and I had to drive 1 mile down the road to pick it up, it was a win. Now say I am a seller though. I have a bookcase for 200, and it is gently used so I'd get 40% credit back. That's $80, which is of course better than 20, but it would require me loading the fully assembled case into the car (on top of the car?) and driving it to Ikea, all for an additional 60 bucks gain. If I have the car, and able to move it, and have the time, 60/hour is still a good "income" for a lot of people. But boy that's a lot of work for a one time benefit, and most Ikea pieces that can be car-transported when assembled don't even cost 200 bucks. It's hard to imagine a lot of people going through the trouble, when they can just sell it for a few bucks to a neighbor and forget it. On the other hand, if you get UHAL, grab 10 bookshelves, pickup and deliver them all to IKEA on the same day, now that's $500 in profit. Someone could make a good side hustle out of it. Anyway, we shall see.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  I'd reassemble them in the parking lot for that kind of savings, tbh. I've moved so much IKEA furniture that I can dis- and re-assemble most pieces in a few minutes.
unixhero 6y ago
If only PAX wardrobes were possible to move.
kevindong 6y ago
There is a time and place for cheap/IKEA furniture (keep in mind that IKEA does actually sell some genuinely nice pieces, but they're best known for their budget options). For example, not everyone can afford more expensive furniture or are unable to wait for furniture to become available on the secondary markets (e.g. Craigslist, yard sales, finding stuff on the side of the road, etc.). It's a mistake to think that buying pricey/"longer lasting" furniture is _always_ the right move.
fimdomeio 6y ago
I get a little mad every time I ear about IKEA environment concerns. Traditionally made furniture could last for hundred years, finished with beeswax linseed oil, or something similar. You can easily sand and reapply finish, you can easily reglue a broken part. And when everything goes wrong with an old piece of furniture... you've got firewood. IKEA furniture is built to last just enought time, it's full of composite materials that for sure are really hard to recycle. This is the same BS speach as Apple not providing a charger. If you want to provide greener solutions, provide things that can last longer, are easy repairable and upgradable. It will hurt your profits because you won't be able to shove as many products down the consumers throats, but that's the way it has to be.

312 points by devy 6y ago

This is part of the IKEA push towards a circular economy. There was another article specifically about that at Fast Company earlier this year: https://www.fastcompany.com/90512150/can-the-furniture-industry-end-waste-by-going-circular-ikea-wants-to-find-out https://www.fastcompany.com/90512150/can-the-furniture-indus...

milkey_mouse 6y ago
Something about renting furniture doesn't sit right with me (pun intended). I'd much prefer to be able to sell it back for a fraction of the original cost than to have to pay a monthly fee for my table.
- netsharc 6y ago
  People rent furnished apartments (indeed airbnb has offers where you rent by the month). Apparently it makes financial sense for some people, e.g. digital nomads. A guy I know says he just packs his belongings into his SUV and he's free to move from airbnb to airbnb, negotiating a good price for them (e.g. staying in summer vacation apartments during winter time).
  - a9h74j 6y ago
    Also, have you seen any international homefinding shows on cable? AFAIK in some South American countries buying furnished houses and flats is a common practice. Presumably there is judgment involved in knowing what to upgrade before going on market, but this is also true of other upgrade tradeoffs such as with kitchens and bathrooms.
- nicbou 6y ago
  It's the idea that you pay your whole life for a bunch of things, but don't own any of them. If you lose your income, you lose your car, your computer, your software, your furniture etc.

raister 6y ago

Should we mount it backwards or oddly and then provide disassemble instructions?

chrisseaton 6y ago

People hate on Apple here for being unrepairable... but really Ikea is the best example of the worst kind of building-to-be-disposable. Furniture like a simple table should last you a lifetime, and last your children a lifetime beyond that. You should be able to repair and fix damage. Most furniture can't even become obsolete for technical reasons. Instead Ikea use veneers and crumbling particle materials so you can't fix it at all. Many people say you essentially can't move Ikea furniture between houses because you can't dismantle it and if you tried to it'd simply fall apart. Ikea was a terrible thing to happen to furniture - disposable single-use furniture - madness.

nine_k 6y ago
Some of my IKEA bookshelves withstood at least two moves, retaining a reasonable shape. Though yes, particle board is not the sturdiest of materials, and is harder to amend than wood. My IKEA dinner table is solid wood, though, perfectly repairable if need be; same with chairs.
- mszcz 6y ago
  Same here. When I was in college I bought the shitiest, cheapest IKEA shelves (LACK?) basically made from cartboard that's mounted on a steel rack. They survived three moves, no damage whatsoever. I'm sure that this does not apply to every piece they make, but I wouldn't shit on every thing they make. Another thing I like about IKEA is that I can get parts for most of the things that tend to break. My friend had a custom made kitchen. One of the cabinet hindges broke but the contractor was nowhere to be found to replace it, and he had to scour the internets for that specific replacement. If one of the hindges in my IKEA kitchen breaks I'm sure I'll be able to replace it, probably at no cost, because it's still being made and probably will still be made in 10 years.
  - dagw 6y ago
    If one of the hindges in my IKEA kitchen breaks I'm sure I'll be able to replace it, probably at no cost, because it's still being made and probably will still be made in 10 years. Don't be too sure of that. IKEA has greatly sped up their 'upgrade' cycle lately. Somethings are around unchanged year after year, but more and more things aren't. I've had several cases where I came back to IKEA 2 years later and wanted to expand or replace a thing in a furniture series only to find it discontinued.

nikanj 6y ago

IKEAs biggest competitor is used IKEA. The downside of selling an incredibly amount of identical items is the eventual saturation of the market. I think it's a brilliant move to ensure both the seller and the buyer of the furniture now have to stop by IKEA, the promised land of impulse buys. And paying for the furniture in IKEA vouchers means the real re-purchase cost for IKEA is even lower.

echelon 6y ago
> IKEAs biggest competitor is used IKEA. How is that even possible? Ikea furniture is particle board and frequently doesn't survive being moved a single time.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I’ve done it, up and down a few different staircases and across the country in a container. Tighten a few screws and the cabinets and drawers seem to work year after year.
- dagw 6y ago
  That's a fairly recent development. IKEA still has a fair bit of pretty solid furniture, and much of their older stuff will last for decades.
  - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
    Even the newest IKEA furniture survives moves just fine. We have been selling and buying used IKEA furniture on an Austrian second hand market for the last 5 years and generally no issues. Also the things that often break you can get fixed for free at the store if needed. I think the idea that IKEA furniture does not last is a result of IKEA being very transparent about how the furniture is made.
  - sgift 6y ago
    The myth of all "new" IKEA things being shit is as old as I remember. People said the same thing 20 years ago and when I asked my parents they told me people also said it 40 years ago. Each time IKEA changes to a different production method the old "shit" gets magically elevated to 'very good and far better than their new things'. If that trend was real most new IKEA furniture should fall apart before you assemble it.

say_it_as_it_is 6y ago

Have you ever tried to move Ikea furniture? It falls apart so easily. Recycling makes sense if there's a market for broken particle board, because that is what will arrive.

cannedslime 6y ago
This only makes sense if you have a total disregard for the ecological effect of such a greed oriented consoomer model. This is about selling more products, there by impacting the environment more than selling less, better quality products.
avh02 6y ago
anecdotal: multiple times (the same item moving 2-3 times), with 100% success. Almost damaged a joining part once, but that was our own fault for not completely disassembling out of laziness.

mixedbit 6y ago

IKEA should make it easy to buy replacement parts for their furniture. Currently even for models still in sale it is usually impossible to get parts. You can go to an IKEA store 'used' section, if they happen to have this model returned by some customer, they will sell you parts, but most likely you will return empty-handed. Recycling large furniture, such as sofas, just because they have one tiny part responsible for folding broken, is not really an eco friendly way to go.

avh02 6y ago
I don't know if they have every single part, but some IKEAs have vending machines with spares of at least the common parts.
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
> Recycling large furniture, such as sofas, just because they have one tiny part responsible for folding broken is not really a eco friendly way to go. How is that any different for large furniture from larger vendors like Macys?
- zensavona 6y ago
  Large vendors like Macys generally sell furniture which can be moved or disassembled without breaking said furniture.
- pfranz 6y ago
  While not necessarily a store like Macy's themselves, I know I've reached out to manufacturers when I needed a replacement handle or foot that was lost or broken. Heck, often right inside the package you'll see a piece of paper that says "STOP! Do not return to the store! Call us"
- mixedbit 6y ago
  Not sure about Macys, it doesn't operate in my country, but smaller furniture makers commonly use off-the-shelf mechanisms. For example, there are a couple popular spring mechanism for folding sofas, so if your sofa breaks, you can easily buy a replacement even if the furniture manufacturer is already out of business. IKEA has all these mechanisms custom.

dbuder 6y ago

How about you pay tax IKEA

lnsru 6y ago

It’s a seriously evil plan. Used old IKEA furniture was made from wood and had some level of quality. These things could last decades. Current new things there are made from paper!!! I manage to damage these new things while assembling. New IKEA things can’t be moved, because assembling and disassembling them does not work anymore. It’s a great decision to destroy old used things, so they disappear from secondary market and IKEA can sell more of the paper trash. Edit: paper furniture isn’t new and secret. Old article about it: https://gizmodo.com/and-now-ikea-is-making-sofas-out-of-paper-1706964295 https://gizmodo.com/and-now-ikea-is-making-sofas-out-of-pape...

cannedslime 6y ago
Exactly!
chpatrick 6y ago
They still have the real wooden furniture though. You don't have to buy the cheap paper ones.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  And they make it very clear what things are made of in the meterials section. Most retailers don't
- lnsru 6y ago
  Same model of Kallax shelf now is made from paper. Price is even higher. I have older wooden models. The new one has even slightly different size. I was taken by surprise.
  - the_mitsuhiko 6y ago
    Kallax was never made from "wood". The new one is quite study particle board filled with honey comb paper, the old one was very thin MDF with carton spacers. I have both an old expedit and a new kallax and there is no noticable difference. The main downfall of both is the coating with is thin and easy to destroy.

cannedslime 6y ago

Here is an even better idea: Stop making poor quality products with a low lifespan. Furniture used to be airlooms not trash.

stinos 6y ago

This reads like a joke: By making sustainable living more simple and accessible, Ikea hopes that the initiative will help its customers take a stand against excessive consumption this Black Friday and in the years to come If you want to solve excessive consumption, you should do that exactly, which means tackling the problem itself and somehow achieving that people reduce the amount of things bought. Offering recycling on the other hand doesn't really do that - or at least, I am not aware of a mechanism psychological or otherwise which makes consumers buy less because of recycling. And even if it does isn't it still a band-aid solution, and you're still not dealing with the root cause? Moreover, it does seem recycling is a nice way both for IKEA and customers to buy themselves the comforting (but fake) feeling of doing something sustainable while at the same time keeping things going as usual. Or who knows, even increasing 'hey I can recycle this so doesn't matter if I buy more, I'm still doing my thing for the planet'.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Yeah. Recycling is just a crappy band-aid. I finally realized that when I imagined our modern consumption as a pipeline: PRODUCTION CONSUMPTION RAW =====*=============*=========> LANDFILL MATERIALS That's our economy in a nutshell: an exponentially growing process that turns raw resources into trash. Now add in recycling: RECYCLING (small %) /--------------------------\ | PRODUCTION CONSUMPTION | RAW v=====*============*=======^=> LANDFILL MATERIALS Since no recycling is perfect, all you do is take some (often small) bit of resources and let it loop around the pipe once, maybe twice, before it gets used up to the point of being non-recyclable. It only delays the inevitable. Given that the pipeline grows exponentially, that small loop there pretty much doesn't matter. That's why Reduce is the most important of the three Rs.
- stinos 6y ago
  The 'small %' and amount of times something can be recycled does depend on the material involved though. So while typical plastics are hard to recycle and a lot of it doen't even get sorted and hence goes straight to landfill, materials like steel and glass do much better. Moreover IIRC recycling steel even needs less energy than producing it from raw materials.

Kosirich 6y ago

They should then return them - fully assembled - to the returns desk where they will be checked and the final value agreed. Fully assembled? Will they be ok with me disassembling the furniture for transport and then assembling it in front of the return desk?

silly-silly 6y ago
Hope you kept those instructions ;)

lcamach84 6y ago

This reminds me moves in the fast fashion business were you can dispose your clothes and receive vouchers. The consumer feels good because he is caring for the environment and the store can keep selling more stuff.

glaberficken 6y ago

I think most of the comments so far are focusing on the lack of durability of some items in the catalog, but are failing to see that overall there is in fact a lot of 2nd hand buying and selling going on with items generally in good condition. Over the last 15years I have bought (and sold on) a lot of 2nd hand IKEA furniture. (In fact looking at my house now, I can only see 2 or 3 items that were bought new and the rest are 2nd hand and in excellent condition. There is a very very active market. My daughter's toddler size bed was bought 2nd hand and moved on to the next parent still in remarkably good condition after she wouldn't fit in the bed anymore. I think this is more of a classic "kill the 2nd hand marked" move.

bestham 6y ago
In Sweden it is free to sell IKEA items on Blocket, the Swedish equivalent to Craigslist. The fee for the listing of IKEA items is paid for by IKEA. I believe that IKEA are well aware that they have to cater for a 2nd hand market and find solutions to the "last mile" problem in order to be taken seriously when talking about sustainability. They are on it. If they succeed is another matter.
- mongol 6y ago
  That is an interesting move. High resale value usually also translates to higher first sale value. Compare with cars, for example. For something like furniture, the expectation is that they should last quite long. If IKEA can promote that they indeed do, it provides an edge when people are looking to buy new.
  - anticristi 6y ago
    I honestly don't buy the "we want more sustainability" BS. They clearly want to increase rotation of furniture, so that the first hand market -- where Ikea makes real money -- increases. An honest ad would be scripted as follows: "Tired of your yellow lamp? Buy a shiny new blue one and get rid of the yellow one without feeling guilty."

t-writescode 6y ago

Okay, so everyone here seems to be complaining about the quality of Ikea furniture. I'm very confused. This has definitely not been my experience. I have a television entertainment center setup that I've had for about 9 years and it's still a great piece of furniture. I have 2 kallax bookcases that are still working pretty great (though they are wobbly, but you're supposed to put supports on the back wall, anyway); and, I have a bed that I bought from them that has been working amazingly for probably 7ish years at this point. That's been the only real problem piece of equipment, one because a piece went missing during a move and the other because it has to be completely disassembled during a move and that tends to weaken it a bit. Otherwise, my equipment from Ikea has been just fine over all. I'm even still using some of those junky $10 end tables for various things. Has something more recently happened? Or have I just gotten lucky? Or?

thrav 6y ago
I finally got to the bottom of this, after moving in with my wife. I never owned IKEA furniture, but inherited some of hers. Her big chest of drawers wobbled, and some of the drawers were blowing out the bottom. To her, and to anyone else, this is a shit piece of furniture. The truth is that it’s largely operator error. “High quality” furniture is almost impossible to fuck up. It’s preassembled and built like a tank. IKEA furniture is what the owner makes it. If the owner builds it well, and keeps the screws tight, and doesn’t overstuff it — it’s brilliant stuff, and will last a long time. If the owner does a half ass job putting it together, and lazily tightens the screws, and expects it to stay good forever with zero maintenance, it will devolve into crap. You could find an analogy between Mac vs. Linux here somewhere — though, it’s not perfect. Anyone who thinks IKEA is anything less than an industrial design marvel should go buy a few things there. Having done so recently, my perspective has completely shifted, and I actually love IKEA.
- Symbiote 6y ago
  There are some Ikea products that are difficult to assemble in a lasting way. They are the exception though, and they're always the cheapest things. The smallest Lack coffee table (€10 or so) is assembled with double-ended screws from the legs into the tabletop. There's no way it can take any sideways stress, e.g. by someone leaning or standing on it. A child falling onto the table can break it. The larger Lack coffee table has the same legs, but adds a thin shelf for additional structure. If the shelf is loaded with a few books, it bows after a while. (I have this table.) There are similar problems with the €10 metal furniture.

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dirtyid 6y ago

Buy wood or metal pieces if you want IKEA purchases to last. I appreciate how IKEA iterates and value engineers the hell out of their products. Though ultimately if they care about sustainability, they need to settle on a series of perennial designs and have a viable parts system to support repairs.

shocks 6y ago

Lots of complaints here about IKEA furniture durability. My house is full of IKEA furniture and so far none[1] of it has fall apart. I think these tips can go a long way: - use proper tools instead of the cheap tools that come with the product - if you use a power tool on a screw, only use it for 95% of the task. finish the job with a hand-tool or you will do damage. - do not over-tighten things which screw into wood - metal into metal? LOCTITE. - you're really not going to disassemble that coffee table or small check of draws, so just use a bit of wood glue The great think about most IKEA furniture (or more generally, wood furniture) is that you can modify/fix it when it breaks. Good luck fixing those broken welds on your metal chairs! (1): Okay so my Lack coffee table fell apart, but it's also ~£5. I repaired it with wood-glue and masking tape, good as new, then gave it away for free on FreeCycle.

memsom 6y ago
It's generally great. The only thing we have that was a disaster is a wardrobe with mirrored doors. The doors are too heavy for the fittings and they basically sheared off on one side. Fixing is really hard because the door weighs too much and so is brutal on anything I've had a go at.. and being made from fibreboard, the structure is sawdust very easily. Maybe we will be able to recycle it. That would be pretty nice.
baryphonic 6y ago
Entirely agree. I've assembled loads of IKEA furniture over the years and have only rarely had quality issues. IKEA uses a lot more solid wood these days than compressed particle board, and is thus not bad. The only issue I've seen (which IKEA has attempted to remedy in its more recent iterations) is that the bottoms of some of the drawers in a chest of drawers will "bow" down under load. I've had mass-produced furniture from major brands known for quality, I've had hand-made wood furniture from NC, I've had big-box store self-assembled furniture and I've had IKEA furniture. Hand-made furniture can't be beat, but IKEA really is second best in my experience.
- mauvehaus 6y ago
  I build furniture professionally, and I agree. IKEA stuff has been engineered to within an inch of its life to hold up for a reasonable length of time while being made of the lightest possible materials. A lot of other factory made furniture is built starting from some vestige of traditional joinery, and then cheapened until it hits a price point. The construction is appalling. I don't expect mortise and tenon face frames, but pocket screws would be a much better solution than a couple of pneumatic nails, which do nothing to stabilize the case and can't be driven back in when they pull out under racking forces. At that point, the whole frame has to come off, and since the rest of the piece is as cheaply built, it's anybody's guess whether it'll hold together long enough to put the face frame back on. The thinness of veneers on the tops of things that look like solid wood is a crime too. Most pros do the bulk of their stripping chemically, which doesn't risk damaging the veneer, but you usually have to do at least a little sanding, and it doesn't take much to find out what lies beneath. The result is that you can refinish a piece once. Just like in software (which was my first career), doing repair/maintenance can be a real eye-opener. If you like the look of IKEA, it's generally a good compromise between cost and durability. EDIT: I should probably add that, in fairness, IKEA stuff , at least the particleboard or honeycomb cardboard stuff, is completely unrefinishable. I haven't seen any of their solid wood stuff come in for repair, but I'd take my chances on that if somebody wanted to pay me to.

theshrike79 6y ago

The thing about IKEA stuff is that even if they're made of "cardboard", they still fit perfectly well with more expensive hardwood or design pieces. Other cheapo brands LOOK cheap, IKEA doesn't.

Ensorceled 6y ago

When I moved in with my GF, I wanted to get rid of my IKEA furniture (table&chairs, couple of chests of drawers, etc) so I called a place that takes furniture donations, cleans it up and gives it to needy families. When they heard it was IKEA the guy said it was more trouble than it was worth for them because they end up throwing it out. When I said "no problem, I'll break it up for kindling for my dad" he immediately said, "Wait! It's wood! Yeah, we'll happily take that."

robertakarobin 6y ago

Just want to chime in that I, too, am mystified by the Ikea hate. I've spent all of my 30+ years living with Ikea furniture. I'm writing this from an Ikea kitchen cart that has become my primary workspace. I remodeled my kitchen last fall with Ikea cabinets -- and was able to do almost the entire installation myself. I've never had a serious problem with anything from them. The same cannot be said most of the furniture we've gotten from other places. The expensive, fancy-shmancy reclaimed wood dresser and nightstand my wife bought from some other chic retailer has been repaired about 4000 times.

II2II 6y ago
I recently visited an Ikea store, and most of the furniture they had on display did not resemble the type of furniture that I associate with Ikea (which is cheap, wood, self-assembled kits or modules that are easy to repair or disassemble for moving). Their offerings have changed a lot over the years, perhaps their show rooms vary according to location, and maybe people are choosing what to buy based upon different criteria these days.
- asdff 6y ago
  They sell quite a lot of solid wood furniture.
leetcrew 6y ago
I think a lot of people only experience ikea through the absolute cheapest tier of their products. I actually like this stuff because it tends to be super light, making it ideal for the phase of life where you move to a different apartment every year or two. stuff inevitably gets damaged during a move anyway, so I mostly have cheap furniture that I don't care about. even with the cheapest stuff, I find a little care goes a long way. my cheap ikea bed frame has been moved and reassembled twice now and it still holds a mattress off the floor just fine.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
I don't get it either. In my eyes, they are an example of how good engineering combined with scale makes our lives better. Their stuff is exactly as good as it needs to be. If you were to cut it up and look inside, you'd be shocked how cheap the materials are (big parts of the LACK are literally made of cardboard), but in my experience, you don't notice this in everyday use, and that's the really important part. That's good engineering vs. the medieval approach of just throwing a lot of wood at it until it's definitely enough. Combine it with scale, and the result is me being able to furnish my entire apartment for the price that I'd pay for a single piece of "quality" furniture. My desk (where I shelled out for the slightly more expensive "higher quality" version with a 25? year warranty) and kitchen countertop look like new despite heavy use. Will everything survive a move? Maybe not. That's why I plan to sell to the next tenant what they want to keep, from the rest dump (recycling or waste-to-energy, not landfill) whatever breaks, is not practical to dis- and reassemble, or doesn't fit the new apartment, and then buy new IKEA furniture that actually fits (and have it delivered and assembled by IKEA for probably not much more than the cost of moving "good" furniture).

AstroJetson 6y ago

I have 19 Ivar units, with about 4 - 6 shelves each that have lasted for years (15 in a prior location, 6 here). They are in good shape, show no sign of bowing / slumping. They are made from recycled wood that has been glued to make the uprights and shelves. If you are willing to "toss the pile" you can find shelves that are free of major knots and will look nice. My workbench is a drop leaf table (only drops on one end h that was designed for a kitchen table. Solid as a rock and solid pine. My only regret is not buying more of the wide drawers that were available in the early 2000'. It's hard to find ones that fit exactly in the Ivar units.

technotarek 6y ago

Buy vintage. Solid wood cores, from the 50s-70s. That’s as green as you’re gonna get.

the_only_law 6y ago
Out of all the furniture I've purchased, solid vintage stuff from thrift stores are both top in quality and prices

9erdelta 6y ago

Brilliant! My dream along the same lines would be for Amazon to buy back boxes and packing material.

fortran77 6y ago

I wish the companies that sold "mattresses by mail" would have a program to recycle your previous mattress. Our town is seeing an uptick in abandoned/dumped mattresses, and the theory is it's from the internet mattress business.

peterwwillis 6y ago

I used to buy a lot of Ikea furniture (and take a lot of free Ikea furniture that ends up on curbs in big cities around moving season). Then I learned how much cheaper, modular, and more robust your furniture can be if you invest in some hand tools and built it yourself. You have a higher initial outlay, but the results last longer, can be repaired much easier, as well as broken down and repurposed. Most furniture can be assembled with a cheap hand saw and chisels, or if you're lazy, skilsaw, drill, drill bit set, and screws. I don't know that i'll ever buy a piece of furniture again unless it's second-hand and deeply discounted. There's so much good shit out there already.

kumarvvr 6y ago

At one level down, this is a fundamental problem with Capitalism itself. It expects companies to grow forever, and thus they have to come up with ways to reduce the working life of stuff they make. Imagine if we made furniture with mostly good, strong metal. They would last lifetimes, but Ikea, as a company would probably stagnate after a while. I shop a lot at Ikea too, but usually take care to purchase their stuff that's made with metal. They make a lot of those and those are very durable, if not a bit costly (in India)

yohannparis 6y ago
I bought a metal bed frame from IKEA 10 years ago, it has been with me trough seven moves across North America. Works has new and only needs 8 screws.
Jwarder 6y ago
The flip side to that idea is that consumers choose to buy this limited lifespan furniture. IKEA isn't tricking people in an effort to grow forever; they are just producing what people want.

smileysteve 6y ago

As someone in an American apartment building; I am saddened by the crap thrown into our dumpster; especially with Craigslist and Goodwill. I regularly save "decent" pieces from the dumpster to take to Goodwill. I have an unbroken, framed, mirror in that pile now.

bettyx1138 6y ago

imagine the line you'd have to wait in to do the returns. no thanks.

jdmg94 6y ago

IKEA has to be one of the worst companies, their furniture doesn't meet the stability requirements and there have been myriad of cases where IKEA furniture crushed a child to death. On top of that IKEA has been known to buy ilegal wood from reservations n Romania and other parts of the world. There's an episode of Netflix's "Broken" that goes more into detail. Fuck IKEA

SahAssar 6y ago
I agree that IKEA has done a lot of wrong, but calling them one of the worst companies is a bit much. Are you comparing their wrongs to stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster and finding them equal or worse?

kirillzubovsky 6y ago

I think that's smart of IKEA if they can get the economics to work, but they might be way late to this game. We just "upgraded" our house with a bunch of second-hand IKEA furniture, buying their typical drawers and bookcases for $20 each using Facebook marketplace. Considering that buying a new piece would be $200, and a used one is $20 and already assembled, and I had to drive 1 mile down the road to pick it up, it was a win. Now say I am a seller though. I have a bookcase for 200, and it is gently used so I'd get 40% credit back. That's $80, which is of course better than 20, but it would require me loading the fully assembled case into the car (on top of the car?) and driving it to Ikea, all for an additional 60 bucks gain. If I have the car, and able to move it, and have the time, 60/hour is still a good "income" for a lot of people. But boy that's a lot of work for a one time benefit, and most Ikea pieces that can be car-transported when assembled don't even cost 200 bucks. It's hard to imagine a lot of people going through the trouble, when they can just sell it for a few bucks to a neighbor and forget it. On the other hand, if you get UHAL, grab 10 bookshelves, pickup and deliver them all to IKEA on the same day, now that's $500 in profit. Someone could make a good side hustle out of it. Anyway, we shall see.

mywittyname 6y ago
I'd reassemble them in the parking lot for that kind of savings, tbh. I've moved so much IKEA furniture that I can dis- and re-assemble most pieces in a few minutes.

unixhero 6y ago

If only PAX wardrobes were possible to move.

kevindong 6y ago

There is a time and place for cheap/IKEA furniture (keep in mind that IKEA does actually sell some genuinely nice pieces, but they're best known for their budget options). For example, not everyone can afford more expensive furniture or are unable to wait for furniture to become available on the secondary markets (e.g. Craigslist, yard sales, finding stuff on the side of the road, etc.). It's a mistake to think that buying pricey/"longer lasting" furniture is _always_ the right move.

fimdomeio 6y ago

I get a little mad every time I ear about IKEA environment concerns. Traditionally made furniture could last for hundred years, finished with beeswax linseed oil, or something similar. You can easily sand and reapply finish, you can easily reglue a broken part. And when everything goes wrong with an old piece of furniture... you've got firewood. IKEA furniture is built to last just enought time, it's full of composite materials that for sure are really hard to recycle. This is the same BS speach as Apple not providing a charger. If you want to provide greener solutions, provide things that can last longer, are easy repairable and upgradable. It will hurt your profits because you won't be able to shove as many products down the consumers throats, but that's the way it has to be.