Of course, we would love to be able to stop climate change by tomorrow, however, tackling climate change is a complicated problem that requires a huge scale of different resources ranging from politics down to consumer habits.

 

One of the biggest causes of climate change stems from people 'consuming too much', which results in many goods ending up in landfill at the end of their life cycle. These landfills create many problems such as: releasing biogas into the atmosphere, causing fires and contaminating surrounding soil and water.

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Focusing on the UK, which is one of twenty countries that are responsible for 76 per cent of global greenhouse emissions, household waste was responsible for 28,538,400 tonnes of national waste annually the equivalent of 113 Cruise Ships. Within household waste, furniture is one of the most thrown-away items.

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In the UK, just under a third of people (30%) have thrown away furniture, electrical items and homewares in good enough condition that they could have been re-used, sold or donated. With a fifth of 16-24 year olds (19%) claiming they ‘don’t know’ how to recycle or donate. Compared to over 55s saying they were far less likely to get rid of items than those aged 16-24 (21% vs 45%). Zooming in further, nearly half of Londoners (45%) have thrown away good quality furniture, electrical items and homewares.