When it comes to buying furnitures, what is the most important thing to you? The price? The material? The brand? Or maybe the history of how did that specific furniture end up in the store?
If you answered yes to the last question, the next question is: do you also act on the knowledge? If you find out that the most beautiful and amazing piece of furniture you have finally found has been done in some shady sweatshop in not-so-amazing circumstances, will you still buy it? Or do you show your opinion and leave the furniture in the store?
And how about, do you ever think about what happens to furnitures afterwards -I mean when the furniture "dies"? Obviously it goes to the cemetery of furnitures, to the dump. Have you ever thought about how long does it stay there? When buying furniture, should people also think if you can recycle the furniture?
I must admit I have not really paid attention in these things before. But now, as I am writing my essey from IKEA, I have become conscious about the ethical resourcing and furniture. If you are interested in what I have been reading about IKEA here is the link:
http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_GB/about_ikea/pdf/IKEA_SER_08_GB.pdf
It seems like I am in the mood of manyyy questions. Here is the final one: what do you think?
5 comments:
Yes, you caught me. In Finland I live in the middle of IKEA furniture. And, even though I know I should, I do not feel bad about it. I had bought furniture only once in my life and that was when I moved to my first appartment two and half years ago. I bought all the furniture at the same time and lived with them for almost two years (I think that is quite good because all of them were bought from IKEA..) So I think that I made my point clear - price was number one at that situation.
I had not thought about these "what is ethical and what is not" -things before I started to study at Solent. Now I have two ethics courses and.. slowly but steadily I am starting to notice some changes at me. Before I could not care less what bananas I bought but today I consciously chose FairTrade bananas. So maybe when I move back to Finland I might go and look for furniture also from somewhere else than IKEA..
Honestly, I have never thought about what happens to a piece of furniture when I throw it away. I had never done that :D Actually I am not even sure what would be the correct way to get rid of furniture.. Want to tell me?
Hugs!
I never cared about those things before, but reading this particular IKEA .pdf made me thinking about same questions.
As almost any young people, we want to live in luxury, and that luxury means also living surrounded by furniture we found the best. Since I was a little kid, everytime we were buying a new furniture, we spent unimaginable amount of hours thinking about what to do with the "old" furniture. We always donated it to families we knew they need it (parents as doctors were quite informed on social situations in almost every family in our town). My dad is incredibly stubborn and we never (and I literally mean the word NEVER) threw up anything we were not absolutely sure can't be repaired or processed. And if we did threw up, we didn't use dump. We gave it to companies which interest in recycling materials...
When it comes to IKEA, I still don't know if I am fan of what they do (but yet here I sit on IKEA chair, what a hypocrite). Making affordable luxury-looking furniture from low-cost materials. Sounds fancy though, but if I had much more money I would buy furniture worth them because really fancy furniture is an inheritable thing gaining on value every singe year. May we say the same when it comes to IKEA?
thanks for your opinions!
satu, what comes to recycling the materials i think one should take their old furnitures a.) into a recycling center b.) into a dump, in dumps they can separate the materials and recycle them.
im not sure about other opinions.obviously, if you have wood and a fireplace or so you can burn them.in my opinion they should REALLY put more effort what comes to recycling the furnitures because as you just read, i honestly havent got a clue about the big picc what comes to recycling..we just attend to close our eyes with these things..
juraj, good to hear your example! i think your parents are very responsible and wise persons.but i also think it is more with their age.in the past you were using old to create new and didnt put anything into dumps.there was no such things as furniture stores, you did everything with your own hands.it is cool that your parents have kind of given you this way of thinking and maybe you will also continue living with that attitude! i wish there was more people like that. it is so easy nowadays just to enter the stores and just abandon your old chair / sofa /table etc outside. in finland i've seen many forests full off old furnitures and stuff. that is disgusting :S
now that i have written these texts and lie really thought about it, i begin to feel bad... i will definitely start to pay more attention on these things even though im not yet in the place in where recycling old furnitures would be an issue, but i will someday be in that place and i dont wanna realise that my furnitures will make a big bad deal for the nature ...
Repair, restore, reuse, recyle- as someone who ahs had furniture for over thirty years, there is a cycle of usage. Eventually, when it is all beyond repair, restoration or reuse, and no one wants it, the choice is recyle it (drive it to the dump where they will break it up and reclaim the wood pulp) or burn it- we use it for kindling in our log fires in the winter, or when we are clearing brushwood. So, nothing goes to waste. I am AMAZED at how thoughtless city people are at throwinig stuff away to end up in landfill that could have had years left of productive life. I live in a rural village, where a more sensible approach is taken.
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