Keep your sofa out of the landfill

At a landfill outside the city, piles of trash lie in containers. Among all the discarded items, one thing stands out: fully functional sofas and other furniture that someone has recently grown tired of. They could easily have found new homes, but now lie waiting to be burned or buried. This is unfortunately a common sight in today's society, where waste and toss have become the norm.

An unnecessary mountain of furniture waste

Useful furniture ending up in landfill is more than just a sad sight. It is a huge waste. Swedish households throw away around 170,000 tonnes of useful furniture every year (according to Medveten Konsumtion). Across the EU, around 10 million tonnes of furniture and furnishings are discarded annually, of which 80 to 90 percent are either buried or burned (according to Medveten Konsumtion). Imagine the resources this represents, literally going up in smoke.

The problem has grown in step with our increased consumption. Between 2009 and 2019, Swedes' purchases of furniture and home furnishings increased by 47 percent, the largest increase of all consumption categories (according to the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation). New trends and easily accessible furniture stores mean that we replace furnishings more often than before. But for every newly purchased sofa, an old sofa often has no place, and all too often the solution is to take it to the nearest recycling center or landfill. The result is that our waste stations are filled with furniture that could actually have continued to be used.

The environmental cost of throwing away and buying new

Throwing away a piece of furniture not only means the object itself is lost, but also that all the energy and raw materials that went into making it are wasted. The furniture industry consumes large amounts of wood, metals and textiles, and production involves transportation and greenhouse gas emissions. When a sofa is burned as waste, its material value is lost, while the combustion contributes to carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants.

Constantly buying brand new furniture is also a heavy burden on the climate. A normal set of new furniture for a small living room leads to emissions of over 0.5 tons of CO2e, which is about half of a person's total annual budget to meet the Paris Agreement's climate goals (according to Conscious Consumption). By reusing existing furniture instead, we avoid these emissions and save large amounts of energy and raw materials. In other words: every piece of furniture we reuse means a direct environmental gain, both in the form of reduced waste and avoided climate emissions from new manufacturing.

When time runs out for the furniture

Despite the benefits of recycling, we often see how lack of time causes furniture to be thrown away anyway. In local online advertisements, it happens every day that people write something like: "If the sofa is not collected by Friday, it will go to the dump." Often, this concerns fine furniture that is still fully usable, but the owner needs to get rid of it quickly, for example when moving or buying a new home. We at Ottossons Möbler see such cases all the time. We try to save some of this furniture in time, but unfortunately we do not always make it before the truck to the dump. Every time an advertisement ends with the furniture having to be taken away as waste, it is a failure for the circular economy.

What is it that causes so many pieces of furniture to be given this hasty death sentence? Sometimes the second-hand market bursts when supply (everyone who wants to get rid of sofas now) exceeds demand at the moment. Sometimes people lack the energy, time or transport to give away the piece of furniture. And many may not be aware of the alternatives available. But fortunately, there are solutions to this pattern of wear and tear.

Give your furniture a new life instead of an early grave

Instead of letting fully functional furniture meet a sad fate in the landfill, we can let it circulate further. There are several ways to give a piece of furniture a second life with someone who needs it:

• Sell ​​or give away. The first option should always be to try to find a new home for the furniture. Place an ad well in advance on sales sites or in second-hand groups. Often there is someone nearby who is happy to pick up a sofa for free or at a low cost, as long as they know it is available.
• Donate to recycling. Charities and second-hand stores accept many types of furniture. By handing over your old sofa to such an organization, it can be useful in a new home, while the proceeds often go to a good cause.
• Get help from recycling professionals. If no interested speculator shows up and time is short, there are companies that specialize in taking care of used furniture. Here in Skåne and large parts of southern Sweden, for example, you can have furniture picked up at your home for recycling. We are happy to help, contact us here and we will discuss further.

Sustainability starts at home

It may feel convenient to just throw away the old and buy new, but the consequences of this behavior are hard to ignore. Every sofa, chair or table saved from landfill is a step towards more sustainable consumption. We all need to get used to the idea that furniture, just like people, deserves a longer life than just one season or trend period.

The next time you have a piece of furniture you no longer need, think before you throw it away. Could it make someone else happy? Can it be repaired or rebuilt? Maybe there are local initiatives that would be happy to take care of it. By making that little extra effort, you are giving the planet a gift: less waste, lower emissions and a richer cycle for our things. Together we can ensure that fully functioning furniture does not belong in the landfill, but can continue to be useful and enjoyable for many years to come, for someone else and for the sake of the environment.