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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…
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What do too many strays say about a system?
Who is to blame for the preponderance of furniture waste? Individuals? Cities? Waste haulers? Manufacturers? The system as a whole? A couch can weigh 200 pounds. It is hard to move. There are few places to take them. Used furniture can have pet dander and other hidden allergens. Street furniture are strays, used to being treated well by their previous families, now left to fend for themselves in elements they were never built to withstand. Exposure to city grime= premature death sentence. They know it. We know it. But what do we do about it?
