Ever Ditched A Couch On The Curb? Here’s Where It Ended Up
A year in your home, 1,000 in the landfill — Here’s why we should rethink furniture waste
Story by Sophie Cadran
Picture the urban streets of Bellingham in the summer. How far can you drive before spotting a mattress that’s been sun tanning a little too long, a couch that looks like it’s hosted more parties than it can handle or a wooden dresser missing one — or all — of its drawers?
For many, the sight of abandoned furniture sparks a range of reactions. If you're a college student rushing to ditch your couch before heading home for the summer, the sidewalks of Garden Street likely feel especially hopeful and inviting. If you’ve just moved into a new apartment, your eyes might scan every discarded piece on the curb, hoping for a free find. For others, your daily drive to work may include tallying how long that tattered couch will sit abandoned before someone — anyone? — picks it up.
"Out of sight, out of mind," as the saying goes. Despite the relief of finally getting rid of your unwanted dresser, that piece of furniture represents more than you’d think.
WHAT WE’RE REALLY THROWING AWAY
“When we throw furniture away, it's a little bit of resources that we're throwing away,” Xenia Dolovova, founder and executive director of the Furniture Repair Bank said. “It will take [generations] for it to become a resource again.”
Similarly to Bellingham, Seattle has also fallen victim to the abandoned furniture infestation, much like most urban cities.
Recognizing the need and the lack of resources dedicated to addressing the impact of abandoned furniture, Dolovova started the Furniture Repair Bank in Seattle about three years ago. The Bank works to keep furniture out of landfills by repairing and restoring donated furniture pieces to like-new condition. Once fixed up, the furniture is given for free to people in need, including youth aging out of foster care, women escaping domestic violence, those transitioning out of homelessness and refugee families, Dolovova said.
Haydn Dandy volunteers at the Furniture Repair Bank, assisting with pickups, deliveries and repairs. Most pieces he worked on had minor cosmetic issues or were simply unwanted. He sees the restoration process as a practical way to reduce waste while helping vulnerable groups. “Being able to take the furniture into your hands and work with the Repair Bank to get that into their hands is very nice,” he said.
However, Seattle residents' first instinct isn't always to bring unwanted furniture to the Bank or other local centers. Part of the Repair Bank’s operations includes working with the local transfer stations, the last stop for Seattle garbage and junk before it is shipped to an Oregon landfill. Before customers reach the scales at the transfer station, Repair Bank personnel will offer to take any unwanted furniture, ultimately giving it a second life rather than contributing to a landfill.
LEFT: Furniture Repair Bank founder and executive director Xenia Dolovova assists a St. Vincent de Paul - Seattle volunteer in loading two refurbished dressers and a coffee table into a truck bed. The furniture, restored for reuse, was delivered to a community member in need. | Photo courtesy of the Furniture Repair Bank
RIGHT: In March, a deserted twin mattress sticks out of a dumpster at Hamlet Apartments - left abandoned for weeks before it was hauled off. | Photo by Sohpie Cadran
Dolovova believes that many residents opt to bring their furniture to the transfer station expecting it to be a more straightforward process than finding a local charity or organization to sell or donate to. However, like individuals who abandon their furniture on the side of the road, Dolovova believes that most people don’t think about what happens to their furniture once it’s hauled away.
“I think every single person in the world should go to the transfer station and see how that works,” Dolovova said. “It’s mind-opening and provides you with a perspective that there’s no ‘away’ for everything that we unwrap and throw away.”
WHERE DOES YOUR COUCH REALLY GO
Bear with me for a moment. Let’s say you’re getting rid of your old couch. You rent a U-Haul, wrestle the stained, tattered sagging thing inside and drive a few miles north on I-5. You take Exit 260, weave through a couple of roundabouts and pull into the Recycling and Disposal Services facility. You drop it off, drive home and feel a sense of relief — it’s gone.
But for your couch, the journey is just beginning.
Once sorted, the facility determines it can’t be recycled. It’s trucked to the landfill pile, then loaded onto a train bound for Oregon. It’s unloaded and left to sit — its final resting place.
In a few months, the thin threads and weak glue holding it together begin to disintegrate. After half a year, the fabric rots away. Over the decades, the wooden frame slowly decomposes. After 20 years, metal staples start to rust. Centuries pass, and while the wood and fabric have mostly disappeared, the polyurethane cushions remain — your accidental coffee stain still lingering on the armrest.
A thousand years later, the couch that once sat in your living room is almost — almost — gone.
THE IMPACT OF FAST FURNITURE
Nate Witham, salvage crew manager at the ReStore in Bellingham sees firsthand how much usable furniture gets discarded. His job includes collecting furniture donations, salvaging materials from homes and businesses, and recovering reusable items like lumber, windows and cabinetry during demolitions and renovations.
“The amount of things that are thrown out every day really defies comprehension,” Witham wrote in an email. “When you go to the dump and see the big pile, you've got to realize that what you see there is just a portion of the waste just this county produced for that day.”
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), furniture waste reached 12 million tons in 2018, with about 80% ending up in landfills — up from 2.2 million tons in 1960. That’s a staggering 445% increase.
With such a complex issue, there’s no single entity to blame. However, there’s growing concern regarding the impact of “fast furniture” — inexpensive, mass-produced, trend-responsive and made with low-quality materials — as a major contributor to the exponential growth of furniture waste.
Madeleine Gamble, a 23-year-old furniture refurbisher in Spokane, has seen the shift toward fast furniture firsthand. She repairs pieces built to last and has noticed a growing presence of cheaply made items on resale platforms like Facebook Marketplace.
“I think the biggest thing you can relate it to is fast fashion,” Gamble said. “I think it's better for everyone, environmentally and also just economically for yourself if you're going to get something to furnish your home that's going to last a long time.”
While fast furniture provides an affordable alternative for individuals with lower incomes, it often ends up being a short-term solution. A cheap, mass-produced desk may be the only option for someone on a tight budget, but when it breaks, it’s often beyond repair — forcing the buyer back into the cycle of purchasing, discarding and replacing.
“All newer furniture is made of particle board which is easy to damage and hard to repair,” Witham wrote in an email. “Older pieces are more often made out of plywood or hardwood and are more forgiving and longer lasting.”
Both the ReStore and the Furniture Repair Bank see cheaply made furniture come through their warehouses. Although they typically cannot be repaired due to the quality, both centers try to utilize the pieces for parts at the least. “If a piece can't be fixed we might try to save useful parts off of it, but unfortunately, the landfill is the next stop,” Witham wrote in an email.
Two volunteers from Microsoft worked together on carbon removal at the Furniture Repair Bank in October 2024. The Bank partners with local businesses to host volunteer groups. | Photo courtesy of the Furniture Repair Bank
REFURBISH, REUSE, REPEAT
Gamble’s passion for buying and fixing up second-hand furniture started with furnishing her college home. “I walked into a furniture store and realized I’d have to pay two months’ rent for the pieces of furniture I was looking for,” she said. But since graduating high school in 2020, Gamble has even earned money from selling pieces she’s refurbished.
When she first started refurbishing furniture, she worked within the tight constraints of her apartment, getting creative with storage and sanding pieces outside on the grass in the summer. “It was not the most liked thing by my roommates,” she admitted with a laugh.
Now living in a house accommodating her growing craft, Gamble’s garage features everything from dressers, tables, couches and decorative items. Prepared for a variety of projects, she always has an electric sander, spare hardware, paint stripper, leather grease and fresh paint on hand.
While many people opt to replace damaged or unwanted furniture, Gamble believes there's already plenty of quality furniture in circulation. With a little TLC, she says, second-hand pieces can be just as good — if not better — than new ones. Plus, outside of some upfront costs for tools and supplies, refurbishing is often the more affordable option.
“There's a ton of stuff out there that you just have to put a little bit of work into, and then they’re good as new,” she said.
When friends admire the refurbished pieces in her home, many tell her, “I could never do that myself,” Gamble says. Contrary to how it may seem, Gamble says it’s easier than you’d think. “It's just a matter of looking for those pieces and being okay with putting in a little bit of work to get it to that point,” she said.
Before (LEFT) and after (RIGHT) photos of Madeleine Gamble’s first profitable refurbishment project. She found the dresser on OfferUp and restored it in just two days — sanding the surface, repairing scuffs with wood putty, painting the handles separately and applying multiple coats of white paint. She later sold the dresser to a family furnishing their child’s room, using the earnings to help furnish her first college apartment. | Photo courtesy of Madeleine Gamble
IT’S YOUR CHOICE
The problem of furniture waste won’t be solved overnight, but as Witham sees it, change starts with individuals making conscious choices. “There are things we as regular folks can do to try and mitigate; buy used, buy good quality repairable goods and fix and maintain what is already out there in the world,” he wrote in an email.
Still, Witham acknowledges the powerful economic forces driving the cycle of waste. “The truth is, nothing will improve as long as there are billions to be made cranking out cheap junk,” he wrote in an email. “If anything, the disposability of basically every consumer good is a feature that our system loves to perpetuate, as it's profitable.”
While the system may thrive on disposability, individuals still have power. Dolovova believes in making restoration accessible and community-driven. “We would love to see a world where people get furniture restoration in their hands and just do the fun project for themselves,” Dolovova said.
For Gamble, the growing interest in sustainability is a promising sign. “I think there's enough furniture in this world to sustain the people,” Gamble said. “The more that sustainability becomes a trend, and the more that we [opt for refurbishing], the fewer things that find their way into the landfills.”
The reality is that furniture waste is not inevitable — it's a choice. With every piece of furniture we save, refurbish or pass along, we’re proving that a different future is possible. Whether you're a college student furnishing your first apartment, a homeowner looking for a refresh or a longtime resident considering what to do with that worn-out sofa, small choices add up. Buying secondhand, repairing instead of replacing and supporting community efforts all play a role in shifting the cycle. Every action counts — not as a drop in the bucket, but as part of a collective movement toward change.