The cost of comfort: waking up to furniture waste

Abstract

This study is a first attempt to address some of the more significant gaps in the available data on (European) furniture. Furthermore, this study takes a dynamic stock analysis approach to look into material stock- and flow dynamics of European household furniture and project them over time. A total of 11 material categories in 14 furniture product categories are assessed. Using principles of dynamic stock analysis and IMAGE data on population and residential floorspace per capita: a Python model has been developed to assess required furniture- and material stocks, the required primary material used in furniture production and the total amount of recycled- and landfilled material per year, and to project the results overtime. To further inform the model, a material database is developed, containing material- and lifetime information on 14 furniture product categories and a survey (n=108) on household furniture has been conducted to derive furniture intensities per unit residential surface. To project the development of material stocks- and flows in European household furniture over time, two scenarios are defined: the business-as-usual or the ‘baseline’ scenario and a second scenario called ‘the reduced waste scenario’ in which reuse and recycle fractions are gradually increased over time. Following business-as-usual patterns in the baseline scenario, the total material stock for furniture is projected to increase with roughly 97 Mt (or 20%) to 584 Mt, towards 2050. The total amount of landfilled- and recycled waste material from household furniture is estimated to be 36 Mt and 4 Mt respectively in 2050. The total amount of required primary material is estimated to increase to 38.5 Mt in total in 2050. In the reduced waste scenario, the total amount of landfilled material is estimated to decrease to 15 Mt in 2050, where the amount of recycled material is estimated to increase to 15 Mt. Also the amount of required primary material is estimated to decrease to less than 18 Mt in 2050. The results from the reduced waste scenario show that a gradual increase from the reuse fraction from 2021 onwards (from 6% to 35% with a 1% step per year) and a gradual increase from the recycle fraction from 2021 onwards (from 10% to 50% with a 2% step per year), would be enough to reduce the need for primary material by half towards 2050. Based on these results, it is the author’s conviction that furniture should be given a separate waste status, similar to that of cars as set out in the end-of-life vehicle directive (European Commission, 2000): materials inside furniture should be labelled and furniture manufacturers should develop dismantling guidelines for their products to ease repair, remanufacturing and recycling. Targets should be set on the country level for the recycling of waste furniture and for the use of recycled (furniture) material in primary production. … Let’s wake up to furniture waste.