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Comment by professor_v | Hacker News Reader

I definitely think it's a mistake that IKEA stopped printing their catalogues last year. The offline experience is totally different from online. Online I tend to do direct searches for things I already decided I want, but the IKEA catalog is perfect for casual browsing and getting new ideas for stuff I would've never bought otherwise.

It might come off as a cost saving short term, but I doubt in the end the catalogues did not bring in enough money anymore.

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Or they could improve the website to make it easier to get an overview of everything by category and scroll through listings with details with as little clunkiness and ephemeralness as possible

>, but the IKEA catalog is perfect for casual browsing and getting new ideas for stuff I would've never bought otherwise.

Understand the advantage of serendipity by flipping through pages instead of entering product search queries.

Fyi, the latest 2022 catalogs are available online with the typical "print book" layout and also downloadable as pdf:

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/catalogues/

With pdf catalogs, you get the undirected window shopping without killing trees and adding to landfills.

EDIT reply to: >Those PDFs really don't work well on mobile devices.

Sorry for not being clear. The initial UI is not a pdf. They are web browser "digital catalogs" with page layouts similar to a printed book. There's also an option to download to pdf file.

I just tried it on my smartphone and the pages look fine. No pdf download necessary.

Nowadays most people will probably use their phones for this sort of thing. Those PDFs really don't work well on mobile devices.

> without killing trees and adding to landfills.

I wonder what leads to worse pollution. A world where all information is printed and there are are no computers, or a world where no one uses paper and computers, cell phones, Kindles, etc proliferate.

Those are not the options though since personal electronics aren't going anywhere. It's either computers and papers or a similar amount of computers but at least less paper.

I realize that. It's more of a thought experiment.

Paper actually reduces pollution because trees are farmed and replanted in managed forests like crops with decades long seasons.

The more paper we use, the more trees we plant.

>Production of catalogs like this squeezes our biome, and if we don't turn back, it will pop, and we'll be left with only enough resources for a small fraction of us to survive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26163808

Not just IKEA. Argos and CPC both stopped catalogues, and my purchase with them declined. Argos especially had a USP over amazon being the “book of dreams”, something to leaf through in a Sunday morning and go “oooh”

Now I simply buy stuff on Amazon.

I wonder to what extent it's due to considering the environmental impact bad publicity.

probably cost saving, but disguised as CO2 emission reduction

Compared to this though?

"Ikea has for years sold children’s furniture made from wood linked to vast illegal logging in protected Russian forests, an Earthsight investigation has found."

https://www.earthsight.org.uk/news/press-release-illegal-rus...

So IKEA bought lumber certified by FSC, which at least until recently was a well renowned organisation. Apparently FSC shouldn't have certified this particular lumber. "FSC denies wrongdoing, but shortly after being alerted to our findings Bakurov’s certificate was abruptly terminated on 15 Jun 2021."

This might be a scandal with FSC, but hardly with IKEA. I don't expect every company to themselves track every piece of raw material back to the sources. They must be allowed to outsource some of that.

I was not implying anything very factually based, just a decision based on people's perception. Like the ban on plastic straws.

In this day and age, peoples perception is everything, and facts seem to be unimportant.

Facts, like that IKEA used certified lumber so they had very good reasons to believe that they used sustainable resources? Or that this scandal doesn't have anything to do with IKEA, but it seems like everyone that bought wood from that part of the world probably are as big part of it?

They really tried to make it look like it was about IKEA children's furniture!, but if you actual read the article you linked it has actually very little to do with IKEA and there's nothing there that says IKEA did anything reprehensible or even anything that is hard to defend.

Dude, I was agreeing with you.

I linked that article, because I recall it in the news, and it got fairly widely covered at the time with the blame firmly placed at IKEAs feet - "They should have known" apparently.

People believe what they are told these days, without any desire to fact-check or cross-reference. I think this was my point.

Surely cutting down fast growing trees and burying them in landfill is a great way to sequester co2?

Given IKEA essentially produce throwaway furniture by design, I don't think they've got much of a leg to stand on when it comes to environmental responsibility.

Just buying more stuff is literally how they have historically marketed themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBqhIVyfsRg

The price point might make people buy more that's true but calling it throwaway is hardly fair, still have a fair amount of 20 year old ikea stuff around the house and they're pretty extreme about quality assurance.

Indeed, IKEA stuff is really well built, solid, and lasts for years. I’ve had so many bad pieces of furniture from other manufacturers, IKEA just lasts, year after year, move after move

The “IKEA is crap” thing seems to be an American trope.

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