These Brands Aim to Break America's Fast Furniture Addiction

Faced with the concurrent problems of overflowing landfills, a warming climate, and—on a much more quotidian level—the incredible headache of moving or replacing furniture, brands like Kaiyo and Fernish are building more circular, sustainable and convenient ways of furnishing our homes. When it comes to furniture, waste is growing fast—and major barriers to recycling remain due to the materials, upholstery treatment or complexity of furniture design. Americans threw away over 12 million tons of furniture in 2018, according to the most recent available data from the EPA. Less than 1% was recycled, about 20% was combusted and 80% went to landfill. For perspective: that year, Americans dumped 17 million tons of textiles, about 15% of which was recycled, and 82 million tons of containers and packaging waste, of which about 54% was recycled. We can make it stupidly easy so that you have really no reason to throw anything out.Alpay Koralturk, Founder, Kaiyo Online sales, specifically, thanks to low-cost marketplaces like Amazon and Wayfair, grew an average of nearly 14% per year between 2018 and 2023, according to IBIS Worldwide. A lot of that furniture isn't necessarily built to last—relying on lightweight plastic, particle board and medium-density fiberboard construction. "One piece of circular economy is closing the loop—refurbishing, remanufacturing, recycling," said Vishal Agrawal, sustainable business professor at Georgetown University. "But actually, the more powerful stuff is changing the product design itself. And the even more powerful stuff is business model innovation. That's where these rental and resale models are a possible solution." Taking the stress out of resale After struggling to kit out his apartment with secondhand furniture, Alpay Koralturk launched Kaiyo in 2014. The full-service resale marketplace serves metropolitan areas with regional warehouses. They'll pick up furniture from the seller, clean it up, photograph and list the piece, and drop it off with the buyer in New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego and other areas. "We can make it stupidly easy so that you have really no reason to throw anything out," Koralturk said. "If it's got value, we show up." Since its inception, Kaiyo has rehomed over 100,000 pieces of furniture, which it claims has kept over 5 million pounds of furniture out of landfill. Still, similar efforts in fashion have struggled to make this model profitable. Koralturk highlighted Kaiyo is more viable because it's more scalable and solves a costly problem for people. "We're making a real case now at a very large size and footprint and with our customer satisfaction [and financials] that this is the real business model that's going to solve this," he said. Moving made easy Furniture rental company Fernish focuses its efforts on a similar pain point in furniture ownership: moving. Zeroing in on young professionals who often end up following jobs from one city to another, Fernish charges a monthly fee for the use of stylish, high-quality furniture. Like Kaiyo, it's full-service—delivering, assembling and moving the furniture within its service areas of New York City, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and others. In between rentals, Fernish takes back the furniture and fixes it up so it can get back into circulation. Once a piece is too worn out to be rented, it's often donated to a local nonprofit. "Generally, the notion of buying owning, storing, selling, moving, disposing of furniture is such a such a pain, hassle, a headache, a cost center, that we were looking to really reinvent this category around the customer experience," said Michael Barlow, co-founder and CEO of Fernish. Since it launched in 2018, the company says it has kept over 2 million pounds of furniture out of landfill. Less Than 1% of Clothing Is Made Into New Garments. These Brands Want to Change That Ikea, the brand that's become nearly synonymous with the kind of lightweight, particle board furniture that doesn't hold up well on a cross-country move, launched a buy-back and resell program in the U.S. in April 2022. Since then, people have brought 9,700 items back to Ikea stores in exchange for store credit, and 8,500 have been resold. For these circular furniture efforts to make an impact on the industry, though, they have to be both financially viable and environmentally beneficial, Agrawal said. At the root, that comes down to a question of consumer incentives and demand. A combination of rental and local resale systems could solve all these problems at once—but it's no easy task. "The ideal [solution] in furniture would be if I could get customers to buy more durable furniture and keep it for as long as possible," Agrawal said.

Sustainability News

Resale and Rental Brands Aim to Break America's Fast Furniture Addiction

12 million tons of furnishings get trashed each year, and brands like Ikea and Fernish aim to help

Kathryn Lundstrom

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Kathryn Lundstrom