IKEA – People & Planet Positive

Walk through the controlled maze of any IKEA store and read about the materials used in many of the products, and you know you're dealing with a company that is intensely aware of the planet's finite resources and of its responsibility as a global brand. This awareness is at the core of IKEA's People & Planet Positive initiative, which launched in 2012 and calls for its entire supply chain to be 100% sustainable by 2020. People & Planet Positive embodies many campaigns and is a global strategy and mind-set for IKEA—a mind-set that's driving new furniture designs, new materials, new models for collecting and recycling used furniture and new inclusive workplace initiatives. These new systems are already getting results that are changing public perceptions of IKEA.

Some of the financial year 2016 results of the People & Planet Positive mind-set: IKEA produced renewable energy equivalent to 71% of the energy consumption of its operations; replaced oil-based expanded polystyrene (EPS) in flat packs with fiber-based, fully recyclable materials; 100% of its cotton and 61% of its wood come from sustainable sources; and its entire lighting range switched to energy efficient LED. When world leaders met in Paris in 2015 to discuss climate change, IKEA lit up the city with 800,000 LED Christmas lights.