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IKEA Announces Plans to Become “Planet Positive” by 2030

Melissa Massello
Melissa Massello
Boston girl gone Austin + pixie dust spreader on the Tilt-A-Whirl. In her past life, Melissa was the founder of Shoestring Magazine, DIY Boston + The Swapaholics. Now she just wants to drink wine, hike, do yoga + save all the damn dogs, is that so wrong?
published Jun 12, 2018
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“Circular design” is one of the hottest architectural and retail principles of the year, and IKEA just announced that it’s embracing the “planet positive” approach to modern living by strengthening sustainability initiatives and rolling out various new eco-friendly strategies.

At its annual Democratic Design Days summit last week, the Swedish retail giant announced new commitments to inspire and enable sustainable living, making it easier for people to reduce their climate impact and become zero waste by the year 2030.

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In 2017, IDEO and the MacArthur Foundation collaborated to produce the Circular Design Guide, a mindset, methodology, and resources guide for businesses, organizations, social systems and governments interested in embracing the circular economy through one simple question:

What if you could redesign everything?

“Becoming truly circular means meeting people’s changing lifestyles, prolonging the life of products and materials, and using resources in a smarter way,” said Lena Pripp-Kovac, IKEA’s Sustainability Manager. “To make this a reality, we will design all products from the very beginning to be repurposed, repaired, reused, resold, and recycled.”

The sustainability commitments that IKEA just announced include:

  • Designing all IKEA products with new circular principles, with the goal to only use renewable and recycled materials
  • Offering services that make it easier for people to bring home, care for, and pass on products
  • Removing all single-use plastic products from the IKEA range globally and from customer and co-worker restaurants in stores by 2020
  • Increasing the proportion of plant-based choices in the IKEA food offer, like the veggie hot dog launching globally in August 2018
  • Becoming climate positive and reducing the total IKEA climate footprint by an average of 70% per product
  • Achieving zero emissions home deliveries by 2025
  • Expanding the offer of affordable home solar solutions to 29 IKEA markets 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,” said Torbjörn Lööf, Inter IKEA Group CEO, in the press release.

Just a handful of those collaborative partners announced at Democratic Design Days include LEGO, Adidas, Sonos, Saint Heron (founded by Solange Knowles), Little Sun, and designer Stefan Diez.

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