Thinking about mass producing and what kind of problems it conceives. Do we continue mass producing to sustain our ever-growing needs? Or should we change this instead by eliminating mass consumption? A Project concerning IKEA and their massive product production.
This chair is a metaphor for IKEA’s production and consumption culture. They claim to be sustainable by using renewable and recyclable materials. But nonetheless, there are serious effects due to mass production. With mass producing comes mass consuming. This is a problem and eventually, somebody will pay for this.
01 CATÄRULLA Take a seat in the free IKEA chair. Designed and made by Yöri Ettemå for you, our activists. He collected from IKEA 70 catalogues, 124 pencils, and 30 meters of rope that is available at the packaging station. The catalogues are supposedly made of virgin FSC approved wood and 15% post-consumer recycled paper. No information on the other materials is found. The quality is as expected from IKEA, so you can throw it away as soon as possible. It is not only a chair but also a challenge for you, collect it and make it yourself. Seat 44×44 cm. 42 cm high.
02 PINE TREE Pines are among the most commercially important tree species valued for their timber and wood pulp throughout the world. A price of about 20 euro is paid for every ton of Pine Sawtimber. IKEA used 16.5 million m3 of roundwood equivalent in their products. And 582,000 m3 of the total wood is used for paper. As a large user of wood, sourcing from over 50 countries, the IKEA business has a significant impact on the world’s forests and the timber industry.
210 million catalogues are made of 85% virgin wood, 15% is post-consumer recycled paper. But what happens to the catalogues that are not used, are they also becoming waste? If IKEA keeps spending valuable resources to produce the catalogue, they need to put a price on it on behalf of the environment.
The costs of producing one IKEA catalogue.
Who pays for this to be free?
IKEA’s main propaganda tool “the catalogue” is completely free and delivered in your living room, but at what cost? Every day there are materials and products being harvested, made, transported, bought, used, and thrown away. How much waste needs to be produced before we drown in landfills or suffocate by toxic gasses? We need to stop our consumerist behaviour, and IKEA needs to stop overproducing.
03 WASTE Most likely to be sorted, burned and used for thermal energy, or processed in a landfill. Did you know when something biodegradable like paper ends up in a landfill it produces methane, and methane is a 25 times more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide?
2018
If you are interested in the CATÄRULLA contact me for details via a contact form or at info@yorie.nl