IKEA has pledged to become climate positive by 2030. In order to achieve the goal, the world wide furniture manufacturer is looking to remove all single-use plastic products from its stores by 2020. That includes cups, utensils, straws, beverage stirrers and similar items.
“Our ambition is to become people and planet positive by 2030 while growing the IKEA business. Through our size and reach we have the opportunity to inspire and enable more than one billion people to live better lives, within the limits of the planet” said Inter IKEA Group CEO Torbjörn Lööf in a statement.
The company also plans to reduce its climate footprint by an average of 70% per product and achieve zero emissions home deliveries by 2025.
“Change will only be possible if we collaborate with others and nurture entrepreneurship. We are committed to taking the lead working together with everyone – from raw material suppliers all the way to our customers and partners,” Lööf added.
Climate sensitivity has long been a priority at the Swiss furniture giant with the company launching a number of initiatives in recent years. The company has invested nearly $2 billion in renewable energy sources such as solar and wind over the last decade. The investment has resulted in nearly 29 wind farms and around 750,000 solar panels on IKEA’s own buildings around the world.
The company is now helping customers benefit from those investment as well. Customers in Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland and the UK, for example, can now buy solar panels in IKEA stores or online with its home solar offer, SOLSTRÅLE (Swedish for sunbeam).
In August 2017, IKEA launched solar battery storage solutions in the UK where customers use solar energy in the form of electricity that they generate and can export any unused energy – as much as 60% for the average user – to their local grid. Customers can also store unused solar electricity for future use, saving them even more.
“Becoming truly circular means meeting people’s changing lifestyles, prolonging the life of products and materials and using resources in a smarter way. To make this a reality, we will design all products from the very beginning to be repurposed, repaired, reused, resold and recycled,” said the company’s Sustainability Manager Lena Pripp-Kovac.
IKEA is one of the largest companies in the world generating nearly 40 billion euros ($47 billion) in annual sales. Nearly 1 billion people visit one of IKEA’s more than 400 stores in 49 countries all over the world, and the company employs 194,000 people.
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