> There's a lot of IKEA furniture on the second hand market. Anecdata: about half of secondhand IKEA-like furniture i get my hands on is somewhat severely dama

> There's a lot of IKEA furniture on the second hand market. Anecdata: about half of secondhand IKEA-like furniture i get my hands on is somewhat severely damaged, and about a quarter overall i just throw away. Stats may be different elsewhere, but even talking to other local skippers and ressourcerie workers here in France, the common knowledge is that unless you get it in perfect mint condition, there's no point or resale value in chipboard/plywood furniture. (this is not just a furniture problem, about 90% of electronics entering a ressourcerie will just end up in the recycling bin because repairing it takes skills, time and resources for very little commercial resale value) > If this genuinely is a worry of yours then I'd be more worried about what to eat Good point, i'm not claiming simply stopping to buy IKEA-like products is going to save the planet. There's much much more to do. > The problem isn't that we have too few trees I agree overall, although it's often locally wrong: industrial agriculture is displacing a lot of forests and woods which negatively affects the water cycle (a different issue). Here in France deforestation is a real problem and simply keeping concentrated patches of mono-species woods (that you blank cut every X years) isn't helping nature thrive. > Of course, if one has romantic notions of solid wood furniture then one would most likely sneer at products made from recycled wood I have conflicting feelings about it. I'm of course very much pro-recycling as a concept. However the current implementation of taking chemical-filled products and chemical-bathing them to produce more chemical-filled products (eg. plastics or chipboard) doesn't exactly sound eco-friendly. In fact, i'm not even romantic about massive wood furniture. I've more than once almost broke my back on them in staircases, and the price new is crazy. I'd say half of my furniture is massive and half is Ikea/Conforama: 0% has been bought from the original store, 50% has been bought secondhand (the rest found/donated) and no single item cost more than 20€. I don't have bad feelings for my Ikea-style furniture (love my 2 Ikea GNEDBY for the books), i just don't think this industrial production and throwaway-furniture culture is something we should aim for as a society because it's not sustainable.