What is Fast Furniture?

This week BBC Radio 4 aired a programme called 'The Fast Furniture Fix' where journalist and fair fashion campaigner Venetia Le Manna delved into the world of fast furniture and its impact on our planet.

As an upholsterer, it is clear to me to see that the fast furniture movement is a ticking time bomb of a crisis for our environment so I am delighted that it is starting to get some mainstream media coverage. But for those of you out there who don't regularly see the insides of chairs (and the diminishing quality of the materials we upholsterers find in there), I wanted to dedicate this week's blog to shining a light on the subject.

What is fast furniture?

Simply put, 'Fast furniture' is furniture that is rapidly produced and only made to last for one to five years. The furniture version of its sister problem 'Fast Fashion'. Products designed to be cheap, follow a trend and be easy to manufacture in vast quantities. It has a low construction cost and short turnaround time which allow it to be easily obtained and just as easily abandoned, mainly into landfill. Sadly, it is the type of furniture that makes up the majority of stock in current big name high-street and online furniture shops.

Why is it a problem for our planet?

Many of us will have seen the awful pictures of the impact of 'Fast Fashion' where piles of discarded clothes are now so large in the Atacama Desert in Chile that they can be seen from space (if you haven't, you can see them here). Thousands upon thousands of discarded, non-biodegradable vest tops, skirts, shirts etc. Now imagine they are sofas and chairs - it won't take long before the size of the pile of furniture exceeds that of the clothes.

Although fast furniture can sometimes be upcycled or reprocessed, it is typically made with cheap materials that are difficult to recycle or are completely non-biodegradable. Once in landfill, they will be there for a very long time, if not forever.

But it isn't just the landfill waste that poses a problem for our planet. Fast furniture also requires an immense amount of physical resources to keep up with demand - fuelling deforestation and increases in greenhouse gases. Earthsight, a UK not-for-profit organisation that conducts research into environmental and social crime (as they call it), calculated that IKEA alone consumes one tree every second; and that each year it churns through 2 million more trees than it did the year before.

That's before we even come on to the shipping of materials and finished products around the globe and the emissions that come with that. According to Oceana, if global shipping were a country, it would be the sixth largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions with only the United States, China, Russia, India and Japan emitting more carbon dioxide than the world’s shipping fleet.

Short-lived materials, long-lasting impact.

The Global pandemic, followed by the current cost of living crisis, has caused a huge surge in the impact of fast furniture. Increased demand combined with a surge in production costs has led to companies looking to cut costs in production to keep their prices competitive. This cost-cutting has hit the quality of the materials used to make the product.

The problem with this diminishing quality is that it feeds the throwaway mindset. Products break down prematurely and are then much cheaper to replace with a whole new product rather than repair the original one. When it comes to throwaway in the furniture industry though there is no 'away'...it generally means it ends up in a landfill site.

It is unsustainable to keep going through furniture at the rate we are and it needs to change. Currently, the only winners are the company and factory CEOs who are making large profits at the expense of the consumer and the planet.

How can we reduce the negative environmental impact of fast furniture?

The simple answer to that is...stop buying fast furniture!

But that is not realistic in the world that we live in. It isn't about saying no to buying fast furniture entirely, it is about being mindful of our decisions. Taking a step back from the automatic rush to have the latest trend and thinking instead about what would make you happy in your home? Educating ourselves on what the true environmental cost is and recognising greenwashing marketing techniques.

The time for action is now.

Back in my first blog, on Earth Day in April this year, I pledged that I am on a mission to save the world one chair at a time. Standing up and utilising my skills and knowledge in the best way I can to help make a difference to combat the impacts of our industry on climate change. One of those ways is shining a light on both the positive and negative impacts the furniture industry can have on the planet and sharing steps that we can take to accentuate the positive and minimise the negative.

Over the next few months, I will be sharing a series of blogs and social media posts aiming to do just that. While no one person can cure climate change on their own, if every one of us takes action it will add up to huge steps forward. I hope you'll join me on this journey.

If you already have a project you'd like to discuss, and a chair to save from landfill, then please do get in touch here.