The Thrill of the Hunt

On a sunny Saturday morning at the end of January, crowds have come to the “Reborn Furniture Showroom” in the Wenshan District of Taipei. When the auction starts at 11:00, the palpable sense of excitement and competition only grows.

“This antique table has a top made of real Philippine mahogany and a base made of camphor wood, and it was skillfully restored by master craftsmen employed by the Tai­pei City Department of Environmental Protection. Bidding opens at NT$4000!” So announces Yao Wen­qing, the recycling team’s stentorian-voiced auctioneer.

At the hands of the master craftsmen working for Taipei’s Department of Environmental Protection, all manner of old furniture—whether stuff from Grandma’s dowry, new-wave sofas, or old school desks or chairs—can be brought back to life.

Mr. Huang, a Wen­shan resident, says he comes to these auctions every year mostly for the pure fun of it, but also to gain an understanding of market prices. “Traditional high-quality furniture was made with real wood using mortise-and-tenon carpentry techniques instead of nails. Not only do the faces of these pieces show wonderful craftsmanship, but even their backs and inside corners have been hand planed and feel smooth.”

As defined by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), sofas, beds, tables, chairs, sideboards, bicycles, and branches pruned from garden trees are large refuse items. Because of their size, it’s not easy to collect them during regularly scheduled pickups. Before a system for recycling and reusing these items was put in place, almost all of them were burned in incinerators or buried in landfill.

In order to reduce waste, since 2003 the EPA has cooperated with the environmental departments of counties and municipalities to bring about the reuse and recycling of large discarded items. Tai­pei City took the lead by charging nothing to pick up furniture. Pieces that are good enough to remain in use are repaired and then sold at low prices.

For instance, a hand-carved Buddhist altar with a market price new of NT$200,000 might go for NT$20,000 after being restored, or a real-leather three-person sofa might go for NT$2500. Popular multi-geared bikes go for only several hundred NT dollars.

Currently, Tai­pei has showrooms for used furniture in ­Neihu, Wan­hua and Wen­shan. Chen Li’e, leader of Tai­pei’s recycling squad, explains that because of the increasingly entrenched culture of recycling in Taiwan, and also because lean economic times have made people more budget conscious, the city government’s furniture recycling and restoration business is booming. In 2012, Taipei sold more than 14,000 restored bicycles and pieces of furniture for a total of NT$12 million, moving 220–250 items a week. In January of this year the auction unit set a new record: On a single day its Neihu site sold more than 800 items, for a total of NT$1.04 million.

Thanks to the hard work of county and municipal environmental agencies, the amount of discarded wooden furniture that is recycled has been rising year after year as environmental consciousness has taken hold in Taiwan.

To be used again, discarded goods need to be restored. Quite a few of their purchasers marvel at the exquisite work of the restorers. Who are the behind-the-scenes heroes resuscitating these aged pieces of furniture?

Arriving at the second-floor restoration workshop in ­Neihu, visitors are met by the sight of craftsmen busy repairing, cleaning, and applying finishing touches of paint and lacquer to used furniture.

The 30-some workers in these restoration teams were mostly plucked from the several thousand members of the city’s refuse collection and street cleaning squads.

Master carpenter Chen Jin­cai, 64, became an apprentice carpenter at 14. He finished his apprenticeship at 18 and joined the septic tank emptying team of the city’s environmental department at 37. His talents were wasted there, being used for nothing more challenging than repairing stall doors in public rest­rooms. He rediscovered his skills as a master artisan when he was hired by the recycling team’s furniture squad 10 years ago.

Chen says that rediscovering his carpentry skills while helping the environment has given him a great sense of accomplishment. Most rewarding of all is when he can save a piece of high-quality wood furniture from going to the incinerator. “Early Taiwanese furniture made from cypress has elegant lines and is very durable and resistant to insect damage. Restored, it can be used for another 50 years without any problem.”

Chen Shi­xian, head of the recycling team’s furniture squad, points out that restoring this old furniture isn’t difficult for the squad’s experienced carpenters. The problem is doing it in the most time- and cost-efficient manner.

First of all, there is the initial screening process at the time of selection: “You’ve got to select structurally sound furniture that still has some economic value,” Chen says. For instance, pieces of poor quality designed to have only a short life, such as furniture made from plywood, is eliminated right away.

Next, some furniture that has suffered serious damage isn’t repaired but may be torn apart for salvageable pieces such as bed planks, headboards, handles, drawer rails, copper beads and other hardware. Salvaging as much material as possible can save on expense when repairing other furniture.

What’s more, the master craftsmen often demonstrate marvelous creativity in adapting parts of antiques to new uses. For instance, beds lacking planks or missing headboards can be converted into snug benches, or stacks of bicycle wheels can be painted and turned into outdoor chairs.

To keep costs low, the furniture squad repairs rather than reupholsters leather sofas. Chen explains that purchasing newly produced leather is not in keeping with their environmental ethos. Instead, the sofa masters here carefully sanitize leather sofas and do repairs such as replacing broken feet. They may also reapply leather dyes to areas that have lost color.

Thanks to the hard work of county and municipal environmental agencies, the amount of discarded wooden furniture that is recycled has been rising year after year as environmental consciousness has taken hold in Taiwan.

In many other nations flea markets selling second-hand furniture have long traditions, and the recovery, repair and sale of such furniture are all well developed industries. But Taiwan has been catching up in recent years.

Currently, the top places in Taiwan for second-hand furniture include the municipalities of Tai­pei, Tai­chung, Tai­nan, and Kao­hsiung. Those are all relatively affluent places with high numbers of people coming and going.

At the same time, counties and municipalities each have their own special characteristics. For instance, the Cang­jin Ge Recycling Hall in Tai­nan is in a traditional residence from the Japanese era. The city has even opened a “furniture clinic,” where residents can pay to have their antiques repaired. On the other hand, sparsely populated Tai­tung, although only selling its furniture online, also sells unique furniture made from driftwood, which is often snapped up soon after going on sale.

According to the EPA, in 2011 90,000 metric tons of furniture, mattresses and bicycles were thrown away in Taiwan. Only 3885 tons of that total—or 4.3%—were refurbished.

The EPA’s environmental police unit points out that most discarded furniture is never salvaged either because it is too damaged to repair or because there is little value to reap from repairing it, but the limited capacities of the county and municipal environmental units are also a factor. Nevertheless, apart from being repaired for reuse as furniture, there is still another recycling avenue open for these discarded pieces of furniture: Namely, they can be torn apart and ground up into the raw material for oriented-strand board or fiber board. Some parts can also be composted or used as fuel. In recent years, the number being ground up for reuse as a raw material has been 20 times the number being repaired and sold as second-hand furniture.

Chen Wen-Ching, CEO of the Environment and Development Foundation, points out that the economic utility of recycling discarded furniture, aside from the money reaped from sales, comes from the reduction in waste processing and from the money saved by consumers from not having to buy new furniture. What’s more, the used-furniture market creates employment opportunities, bringing even more benefits.

Thanks to the hard work of county and municipal environmental agencies, the amount of discarded wooden furniture that is recycled has been rising year after year as environmental consciousness has taken hold in Taiwan.

The Carpenter’s House Caring Center in Tao­yuan’s ­Zhongli was established by churches and educators in 2000. Back then, ­Zhongli had its share of seedy pool halls and Internet cafes attracting youth. Consequently, the house was opened in the hope of providing a comfortable, wholesome and culturally oriented space for young people and community members.

In keeping with its environmental ethos, the Carpenters’ House was reliant on donations and volunteer manpower for everything involved in the fixing up and decorating of the space. Leftover materials were sold off at flea market events held there. Over time, it came to be known as a location for repairing and selling used items and materials.

In 2005 Carpenter’s House made a proposal to the Council of Labor Affairs to be included under the “Multi-Employment Promotion Program,” with the idea of combining recycling of used goods with employment for the disadvantaged, thus taking a step forward in scale. From cleaning of goods, to repairing, to warehousing, to store management, all aspects of the business are now being carried out to professional standards, and Carpenter’s House is moving away from government subsidies to stand on its two feet.

Liu Xiu­rong, secretary-general of Carpenter’s House, says there are currently 18 workers, each with his or her own unique work history, including a middle-aged worker who was out of work due to the outflow of industrial jobs from Taiwan, a former construction worker with a spinal cord injury, a youth with Asperger’s syndrome, a young woman with a right arm weakened from osteomalacia, and so forth.

In recent year students and faculty from neighboring Chung Yuan Christian University have often used Carpenter’s House as a place in which to practice what they’ve learned and to give back to society. “Last year there were 400 instances of volunteering by the university community, including electrical engineering students who helped repair appliances, and business students who helped to plan fundraising efforts,” says Mai Yu­wen, former secretary to the president of the university, who is the newly appointed director-general of Carpenter’s House.

Whether you’re looking to find a cheap deal or uncover a treasure, or whether you are simply a compulsive searcher for old stuff, go check out the used furniture stations set up by local governments and the private sector. You are certain to get a real sense of the joy to be found in old things.

Rarely seen antiques bring the excitement at a Department of Environmental Protection auction to a fever pitch.

Located in Zhongli, the ­Carpenter’s House thrift store gives work to disadvantaged people and provides the community with a wholesome oasis of cultural activity. The photo at right shows Carpenter’s House’s happy team of workers; on the facing page, the store’s interior.

Located in Zhongli, the ­Carpenter’s House thrift store gives work to disadvantaged people and provides the community with a wholesome oasis of cultural activity. The photo at right shows Carpenter’s House’s happy team of workers; on the facing page, the store’s interior.

Thanks to the hard work of county and municipal environmental agencies, the amount of discarded wooden furniture that is recycled has been rising year after year as environmental consciousness has taken hold in Taiwan.