Fast Furniture’s Double Trouble

Padded seating-couches, sofas, chairs-is often purchased in pairs, which means it is often discarded in pairs.

This both doubles the urgency and increases the opportunity around furniture waste. What do we want our furniture future to look like?

Do we want to replicate the current fast fashion nightmare, where the average consumer buys 60% more clothes but keeps them for half as long? And where this churn sends one garbage truck of clothes per second to be burned or dumped; has created squalid labor conditions for the mostly women and girls who make our clothes; and is estimated to be responsible for 20% of the world’s industrial water pollution?

Is furniture following in fashion’s footsteps? Or, is it already there? Who would tell us if it was?

What local impacts can we expect and how can we prepare our community, local businesses, and local labor? What about our planet? Who benefits from NOT asking these questions?