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IKEA pledges to use 100% sustainable materials by 2030

Words by Smiley Team

Who doesn’t enjoy a shopping trip to IKEA, walking through the isles of mockup homes and pretending they’re yours? That experience is only going to get better because by 2030 IKEA is committing to only use recycled or renewable materials, reducing any climate-related guilt you might feel for buying brand new items.

A significant step towards this goal will be recycling virgin polyester, which makes up most of their textiles products and about half of textiles produced worldwide. To accelerate their drive towards using more sustainable materials, they are ramping up their efforts to recycle this type of fabric.

Material and innovation deployment leader at IKEA in Sweden Nils Månsson said: “We continue our journey to end the dependency on virgin polyester, focusing our efforts on the range segment where conversion will have the biggest impact.” 

At the end of 2020, IKEA recycled approximately 100,000 metric tonnes of virgin polyester. This makes the Swedish multinational one of the industry leaders for recycling such high volumes of the fabric.

Based on their calculations, IKEA estimates that the amount of polyester they recycled in 2020, enabled the reduction of CO2 emissions by 45 per cent, compared to if they had produced only new polyester. In other words, they reduced emissions by about 150,000 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of taking 61,000 cars off the roads for one year.



Raising the bar for industry sustainability

Moving towards progressively more sustainable practices across the board, IKEA’s pledge to use only sustainable materials by 2030 builds on a more general dedication to the environment. At the end of January 2021, the furniture company promised to conserve 11,000 acres of forest in the US state of Georgia, protecting a massive carbon sink and habitats for wildlife including the threatened gopher tortoise.

The company hopes that such efforts will encourage others in the industry to follow their example, as one of their sustainability managers, Caroline McGarvey, explained: "With our size and volume, we know that our decisions can inspire and motivate whole industries to change. 

“By replacing all virgin polyester with recycled in our production, we decrease our carbon footprint for polyester by half and hopefully make recycled materials the new normal. Offering sustainable products at affordable prices will be key in our journey to becoming climate positive and circular. The choice for the customer should never be between sustainability and low price.”

Driven by the dedication of staff members like McGarvey, who focus on sustainability, these initiatives will ensure IKEA adapts to a radically changing world by doing their bit to help the planet thrive.

This article aligns with the following UN SDGs

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