The Improvement of Production Process Impact in Furniture Industry Toward Circular Economy

Abstract

Furniture industry is the industry that processes raw or semifinished material from wood, rattan, or other natural material, into products with higher value added and benefit. Because of a rise in consumer demand each year, the furniture industries should have much attention. High consumer demand may cause production process-related problems that damage the environment. Such environmental damage may be caused by waste, raw materials, or production process. High consumer demand in furniture industry brings negative impacts not only to the environment but also to the society. Social impact assessment is needed to evaluate how a product or a process influences workers, consumers, citizen, and value chain. This study uses life cycle assessment method with the help of SimaPro software to determine the environmental impact, and social-life cycle assessment to determine the social impact. The largest contributor to environmental impact is the use of acrylic varnish. Substitution acrylic varnish with woodstain-water based aims to lead to a circular economy by reducing adverse impacts on the environment. The replacement of acrylic varnish with woodstain water based reduces the environmental impact score by 24.8%. Social impacts score on the workers and local community stakeholder are categorized as poor.

Assessing Circular Economy Barriers in Indonesian Furniture Industry

“…The furniture industry including one of the sectors that adopted by the circular economy (Mhtre et al 2020;Wicaksono and Kadafi 2020). However, most of the furniture industry still follows the concept of economic linear, where the products are made from raw materials of pure, converted into finished products and finally disposed of as waste (Braungart et al 2007).…”

“…A linear economy which is carried out continuously will have an impact is very bad for the environment (Korhonen et al 2017). The application of circular economy can be an alternative to improve economic system with linear production model of "take-make-distribute-consume-dispose" into "take-make-distributeconsume-return" (Wicaksono et al 2020). The application of CE not only provide benefits for the environment, however, give a big impact for the company, among other cost-efficiency, energy saving, reduction of waste generated as well as the possible benefits of employment for the economy (EMF 2013).…”