The End of an "Old" Chair

The "old" recliner as I disassemble it.

 

 

 

In the past year, my fake leather recliner has started to shed. What started with cracks, slowly accelerated into major shedding that started to litter the apartment. I wondered how much the flakes would break down, and whether the dust, possibly laden with all manner of chemicals, might pose a hazard in addition to the daily mess. The prognosis was that it would continue to shed until it was bare. I can't remember how many years ago I paid around a hundred bucks for it at Wallyworld. I know it is less than ten. It was a low cost solution at a time when I had less cash.  In retrospect, buying something more durable up front would have been a more sustainable solution. After I strip a few things off of it, the bulk of this chair will end up in a landfill.

I took it to the garage and decided to salvage the hardware with an eye to building my own chair at a later date. Some of my favorite and most durable furniture are things I have built myself. Furniture hardware can be expensive to buy. In the late 90s, I worked for the mail order retailer Rockler Woodworking and Hardware and got to know the value of mundane furniture hardware. Flipping it over to pull off the recliner mechanism, I found the label below.

 

 

The label lays out the hazards that may have been on the box and packaging that I never read. I always like to cynically joke that I am glad that I don't live in California because this chair would be hazardous to my health. How much concern should we have for flame retardants and other chemicals in furniture, especially as they begin to break down? Whether this chair is in my apartment or in a landfill, the covering will continue to break down into micro plastics that are now ubiquitous in our air and water. Are micro plastics and the chemicals they contain the Asbestos of the current century? What responsibility do we have as a society to make things recyclable as well as non hazardous?

I unscrewed the hardware to keep it for a later date. If I were to buy the metal hardware alone, it might cost me what I paid for the chair initially. The rest of the chair, a mix of plywood, springs and the disintegrating padding, I tear apart into pieces that fit in the dumpster.  When I sold my house several years ago, I cut a hide-a-bed couch into small enough pieces to fit in my 50 gallon trash can, then giving the folding spring away to someone for repurposing. Throwing things away causes me a degree of physical pain, but the options are slim. This chair has become a toxic pollutant that will be shedding micro plastics forever.