Dec. 4—Americans bought piles of furniture during the pandemic, with sales on desks, chairs and patio equipment jumping by more than $4 billion from 2019 to 2021, according to a market data company. And a lot of it won't survive the decade.

Fast furniture, which is mass-produced and relatively inexpensive, is easy to obtain and then abandon. Like fast fashion, in which retailers like Shein and Zara produce loads of cheap, trendy clothing that's made to be discarded after only a few wears, fast furniture is for those looking to hook up but not settle down. It's the one-season fling of furnishings.

Many of the Ikea beds and Wayfair desks bought during the Covid-19 lockdown were designed to last about five years, says Deana McDonagh, a professor of industrial design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. "I relate to fast furniture like I do to fast food," Ms. McDonagh says. "It's empty of culture, and it's not carrying any history with it."

Ikea of Sweden said in a statement that "life span estimation may vary" for its furniture, and customers are encouraged to repair, resell or return products they can no longer use. Wayfair says through a spokesperson that "we sell an extensive range of furniture products across all styles and price points," adding that some are meant to "last for generations as well as furniture that meets customer needs for affordability."

Increasingly, renters and homeowners are opting for fast and cheap, or as Amber Dunford, style director at Overstock.com, defines it, "furniture where the human hand is missing." And they don't keep it long. Each year, Americans throw out more than 12 million tons of furniture, creating mountains of solid waste that have grown 450 percent since 1960, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Bits of tossed furniture can be recycled, but the vast majority ends up in landfills.

"It's quite a big problem, both spatially and also because of the way a lot of fast furniture is made now, it's not just wood and metal. The mate-rials don't biodegrade or break down," says Ashlee Piper, a sustainability expert and the author of Give a Sh*t: Do Good. Live Better. Save the Planet. "We're creating this Leviathan problem at landfills with the furniture that we get rid of."

The e-commerce furniture market alone was worth more than $27 billion in 2021, and projected to reach more than $40 billion by 2030, according to a report from Next Move Strategy Consulting.

For all of its flaws, fast furniture offers millions of homeowners the opportunity to live in a stylish home at an affordable price point. As young people contend with skyrocketing housing prices and economic anxiety, even those who would prefer to browse antique markets or shop for custom pieces may not have the resources to do so. Others pivot.

Doug Greene, 34, bought a 200-year-old rowhouse in Philadelphia five years ago, and after doing a gut renovation, found he didn't want to bring mass-produced furniture into a space he'd so painstakingly restored. So he taught himself how to make furniture, and he and his girlfriend, Ashley Hauza, now have a home where he handcrafted nearly every stick of furniture from solid wood.

"I used to pick up an Ikea desk every time I switched apartments," he says. "I just thought that was the way people did it. I now have a much greater appreciation for creativity and design."

Over the past decade, a number of sustainability-focused companies have entered the market in the hopes of presenting a solution.

Kaiyo, an online marketplace for pre-owned furniture, was founded in 2014 and says it has since kept more than 3.5 million pounds of furniture out of landfills. Those with furniture to unload can offer it to Kaiyo, and if the company accepts — Alpay Koralturk, the chief executive, says the company purchases about half of the pieces offered to them — it'll get picked up for free and the seller will get a check. Buyers can shop the online marketplace, and know that items shown online are always in stock.

Fernish, a rental furniture subscription service, allows customers to pay month-to-month for items from brands like Crate & Barrel, always with the option to buy outright. The service says it has saved more than 1 mil-lion pounds of furniture from landfills."

We recognize that furniture is generally an unrecyclable good," says Michael Barlow, Fernish's chief executive. "The way to give it a second life is to put very quality product into circulation in the first place, and build a supply chain. The demographic that we're built for is people in their 20s and 30s."

Major retailers, facing pressure from customers and environmentalists, are also saying they'll do better.

Wayfair, which saw sales deflate this summer after a pandemic boom, pledged in its most recent corporate responsibility report to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — mainly created by the production and shipment of its products — by 63 percent by 2035.

"We don't claim to have everything figured out, but we're working to address big problems and set strategies with an approach that's true to Wayfair," founders Niraj Shah and Steve Conine wrote in the report.

And Ikea has laid out bold climate goals in its sustainability strategy, vowing to become fully circular — using only recycled or renewable materials, and creating zero waste — by 2030."

Keeping prices low is a cornerstone of our business," Ikea of Sweden said in a statement. "But this must never come at the expense of people and the environment."

In the 2021 fiscal year, more than 99 percent of their wood was either recycled or certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as being sourced responsibly, the company said. Fourteen percent was fully recycled.

The impact of fast furniture, Ms. Piper says, is a hard sell to even the most economically conscious people. But she's optimistic that change is possible.

"You have elements of sustainability that are sexier to people, and are more the gateway drug to sustainability, like fast fashion," she says. But if Ikea can do it, "and they're willing to share how they do it with other companies, that's really encouraging."

READ THE FULL STORY >nytimes.com/2022/10/31/realestate/fast-furniture-clogged-landfills.html

Fast furniture and waste