Yael Aflalo and “Furniture Buyback”
Fast Company Asks: Sick of all your furniture? Soon you can trade in your sofa.
Some 12 million tons of furniture ends up in a landfill annually. Sabai’s buyback program is hoping to change that.
There’s a growing awareness that the products we buy have a major impact on the planet. Consumers who want to minimize their environmental footprint can opt for secondhand clothes and biodegradable food packaging. But when it comes to furniture, it’s not easy to shop sustainably, which is why more than 12 million tons of sofas, desks, and cushions end up in American landfills every year.
Enter Sabai, a 2-year-old startup that sells chic, customizable sofas made from eco-friendly materials. It’s poised to launch a buyback program that lets customers sell their Sabai sofas back to the company; they’ll then be resold to other customers at a discount. It’s part of Sabai’s long-term mission to give each sofa a longer life span and then ultimately recycle it. “The idea is to create an entirely closed loop system that keeps the sofas out of landfills for good,” says cofounder Phantila Phataraprasit.