Peak Stuff
The biggest IKEA fight is one the global retailer is having with itself.
IKEA furniture is…everywhere. And as with anything that’s so seemingly omnipresent, for every voice bemoaning its drawbacks there are 100 twenty- and thirty-somethings jumping into the car to spend a Saturday afternoon touring the labyrinthine depths of the closest IKEA because, let’s face it, you just need a coffee table for that empty space in the apartment and don’t want to think about it too much. And be honest: you’ll probably eventually throw it away.
Does this confirm what many claim, that IKEA sells throwaway furniture for a disposable culture? Where does that leave us Average Joes or Janes in our relationship with our TOVIKs and POANGs? Has it brought out the worst in our consumerist selves? Are we striking a deal with the devil for the sake of short term practicality, or can we learn to stop worrying and love IKEA?
Does affordability always mean disposability?
IKEA itself, perhaps unsurprisingly, challenges the notion that affordability is by definition tantamount to disposability. Certainly this doesn’t have to be the case, but those of us who live in areas where apartment turnaround is high or have large student populations can attest to the piles of used furniture that clutter the sidewalks on move-in day (here in the Boston area we call it “Allston Christmas”). Very little of that which has been disposed of is worth a second look to even the most ingenious of scavengers, and most of it is from (you guessed it), IKEA.
For those either somewhat phobic of committing to a space or simply cash poor, IKEA is the best option for furnishing an apartment inexpensively and in a way that looks finished and intentional. And that’s by design.
Ingvar Kamprad focused his new company IKEA’s business on furnishings back in the 1940’s, in part because Kamprad felt that the people in his region of Sweden deserved to have nice furniture at a price point they could afford. The company was quickly shunned by the furniture industry in the area, driven by complaints from other retailers who couldn’t compete with him on price, leading IKEA to manufacture its own furniture.
Even today, IKEA famously designs its furniture according to principles that will keep its furniture affordable, often giving designers a price point as a starting constraint, which extends beyond the materials and processes used to make an item to the overhead associated with shipping, storing, and distributing the furniture.
The most famous of these principles are flat pack design, the use of multi-density fiberboard in many of the company’s products, and the requirement that customers assemble the furniture themselves.
Interestingly, the constraints aimed at efficiency and keeping costs down are the same constraints that make IKEA a far better environmental steward, at least in some ways, than other furniture companies. Flat pack, for examples, saves an enormous amount of carbon during shipping.
For all its talk of savings because of flat pack design, almost anyone who’s tried to disassemble and reassemble a piece of IKEA furniture can probably expect at least some lost tools or fasteners, a cracked plank, or a door that has somehow gone permanently out of plumb. Which is to say, flat pack in the other direction seems to remain a bit of a unicorn.
The result? That low, low price doesn’t end at the purchase of the item though, with costs emanating from the removal and disposal of the object. The most recent estimates from the EPA out there date back from 2011, when they claimed that almost 10 million tons of furniture made its way into landfills. We as taxpayers have foot the bill to haul it away and dispose of it, and we as global citizens have a limited timeline for ignoring the trash that doesn’t really go away.
Affordability and disposability of what could be thought of as “temporary possessions” are the conditions for a booming consumer economy. And it’s not limited to furniture. Think about clothing brands like H&M or Zara, that (likely) serve a practical purpose (I need a new going-out top) and capture the style of the season. And when that practical purpose is gone or the style is passed, you don’t feel even remotely guilty about sending it to Goodwill or more likely the trash.
Does affordability automatically equate to disposability? Certainly not. I have plenty of stuff floating around that I bought for cheap (e.g. sunglasses) but they do the trick and I know it would be a pain finding something similar that was as right as that object.
But is affordability a precondition of disposability? Absolutely. Unless you’ve got a million bucks to throw around, your threshold for tossing something vs. making it work is very likely tied up in how much it cost to buy the item in the first place and how much it costs to replace or upgrade it now.
The Age of Peak Stuff
Before you put IKEA in your environmental crosshairs as complicit, know that the company is far from ignorant or callous to reality. IKEA has a sustainability program so bold as to have no real rivals in the furniture industry (or frankly beyond it).
A consumer company selling durable goods would be in a very awkward position if it tried to convince you that you shouldn’t want to buy things. Oddly, though, that’s essentially what Steve Howard, Chief Sustainability Officer of IKEA preaches.
Calling our age “peak stuff”, Howard argues that we’ve already manufactured everything we who live in resource-rich societies could possibly need. It just might not meet our creative need or desire for self-expression in its current configuration.
At present though, the world of home furnishings, like much of the economy, relies on disposing and replacing, rather than transforming. Our whole society is filled with a bunch of placeholder stuff, and IKEA still leads the pack in providing those objects. Our entire economy thrives on buying, replacing, and disposing.
However, replacing doesn’t seem quite so bad if the new product as actually a reconfiguration of materials that used to be something else. Some of IKEA’s programs indicate a genuine investment in this kind of sustainability. The retailer has rolled out buy-back programs, bought a recycling company, is phasing out non-LED lightbulbs, and aggressively protects old growth forests (IKEA accounts for 1% of the world’s commercial lumber procurement).
And before you harp on MDF (medium-density fiberboard, the particle board that comes apart and from which so much IKEA furniture is made) too badly, remember that a lot of that is made out of wood scraps or cuttings from the processes behind other products that otherwise would have gone into the landfill.
However, some would say this is just greenwashing the likes of which seen by only the world’s biggest polluters.
Does that mean we think IKEA is the devil? Of course not. For many people it’s been really useful at some important moments, and I for one am glad it was there. I for one couldn’t care less whether business exigencies or genuine environmental concern motivates IKEA’s commitment to addressing the externalities of its business. Let’s judge them as we would be judged, on results.
IKEA: Love it? Hate it? Necessary evil? Never bought a scrap in your life? I’d love to learn about the role of IKEA in your life, and if you consider it disposable or an essential item. Reach out to me at adam.h@spofforddesign.com or follow @spofforddesign to keep the conversation going.
