You've probably heard of "fast fashion," and you know what "fast food" is – but what about fast furniture? The effect that fast furniture has on the environment can’t be ignored.
This is why upcycling furniture has taken off, and our Ottawa upcycling workshop is in full production mode! There’s a newfound appreciation for vintage, antique or secondhand furniture that looks good and contributes to sustainability.
I mean, this is exactly WHY we started Preloved 2 Beloved, a local Ottawa furniture upcycler that focuses on crafting sustainable and beautiful pieces that keep more furniture out of landfills.
Why are more people turning to upcycling furniture?
Lack of quality, overwhelming options, supply chain issues, unreliable deliveries, having to replace it more often - and don’t even get us started on ASSEMBLY - mass-produced “fast furniture” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. What we save out of pocket comes at a significant cost to the environment.
Here’s why we are such big supporters of upcycling furniture:
Furniture is one of the fastest-growing contributors to urban waste. Back in 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found furniture accounted for more than 12 million tonnes of municipal waste in the US. While Canada doesn’t track the amount of furniture that ends up in our landfills, we can guess that our stats would be similar.
Those Swedish furniture guys consume a whopping 600 tons of wood particleboard just to create their popular bookcases and use over 1% of all commercially harvested wood worldwide.
On a life cycle basis, particleboard takes more energy and water to produce than hardwood and often contain toxic chemical like formaldehyde, so it’s not nearly as home or eco-friendly as some would like you to believe. The lifecycle of fast furniture is short because so much of it is non-recyclable.
The good news? Preloved 2 Beloved sells upcycled furniture in Ottawa
Browse our finished projects for inspo or shop our ready-to-buy collection or start a custom upcycling project.
