By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Few are the people who eagerly anticipate a trip to IKEA, the cheap, stylish Swedish furniture retailer, which with revenues of $23.1billion in 2010 and staff numbering more than 127,000, has grown to the size of a small country over the past five decades.
While visits to IKEA’s giant, out-of-town stores can be headache-inducing, divorce-breeding, stressathons, they, nevertheless, have become an integral part of modern life for students, young professionals and homeowners from Dubai to Durham. So should we be among them? Especially those among us with an eco-conscious streak?
While the company tries to make its stores and processes greener and more ethical there are still things that don't add up and make a lot of the sustainability attempts and such appear like greenwash and no more.
When it comes to IKEA's furniture, and other stuff, today is that most, if not indeed all, of it nowadays, as with the majority of products elsewhere, I know, is “Made in China” and that's where I am having a problem.
I well remember a time when they were proud of the label “Made in Sweden” as, in the early years well into the 1990s everything almost was.
IKEA says that it is moving towards powering all of its stores with renewable energy, and has been working to cut its power consumption levels since 2005 – although it is yet to set a deadline for either target. In fact, there is a certain ambiguity to a lot of the company’s more ambitious-sounding sustainability plans. Take its scorecard system.
In 2010, IKEA launched an internal tool to measure the sustainability of each product it sells based on a series of 11 metrics. In its sustainability report released the same year, the company said that it wanted everything it sold to be ‘more sustainable’ by 2015 - a slightly opaque measure, although it also aims to reduce the amount of energy used in producing its white goods by 50 per cent by 2015, and the amount of water used in all of its products over the same period.
But, IKEA is not alone with claims and targets and it must be said that many of theirs as well as those of supermarkets such as Sainsbury's seem to be little more than greenwash and that is, once again, where I have an issue.
By the same token, IKEA literature trumpets plans to install solar panels on 150 stores and distribution centres worldwide to meet 10 per cent of its energy needs but by December 2010, only seven panels had been installed on just 17 buildings. The company plans to increase this to 40 by the end of 2011.
IKEA also likes to sell its ethics, and by all accounts has worked hard to make sure that the materials it uses, and the labour used to produce it, is sustainably sourced and meets international regulations.
The ‘IKEA Way’ is a set of rules and regulations for its suppliers, which it hopes to see fully enforced by 2012. They include rules on where wood is sourced from, and oblige suppliers to provide annual reports on the origin, volume and kind of wood used in their products.
The Rainbow Alliance, meanwhile, audits the company annually. IKEA also has strict rules on child labour, and demands that all of its suppliers recognise the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. If a supplier is found to be using child labour, IKEA says it will be asked to end the practice or have its contract revoked.
All of this is very well and good, but the key issue with IKEA from an environmentalist’s point of view is that the company encourages the mass-consumption of goods that generally need to be replaced after a few years, putting an increasing strain on the world’s natural resources.
IKEA is – by some measures the world’s third-largest consumer of wood – sells products with a limited lifespan and, by claiming its products are ‘sustainable’ and come from ‘renewable’ sources, effectively encourage consumers to replace like with like, rather than spending more on longer-lasting products.
On a more anecdotal note, who has ever visited IKEA and left with just what they went to get? IKEA stores are famous for being designed to encourage visitors to buy all manner of goods they didn’t think they needed, and probably didn’t. Meanwhile, the company’s out-of-town stores make it all but inevitable that the average IKEA shopper will have to bring a car - try taking an IKEA bed home on the bus or train - to a destination which is much further away than they would normally go.
Clearly, IKEA is doing its bit to become an ethical and sustainable producer but at heart its low-cost, high-volume business is one which relies on the constant consumption and replacement of goods that use pretty much every natural resource you could care to mention, including wood, water, energy. IKEA’s argument - and it is a compelling one - is that because it mass-produces affordable goods, and makes those goods as sustainable as possible, it is ensuring that huge numbers of people are reducing the environmental impact of furnishing their homes.
Given that around 170 million people a year visit the company’s stores, this is a fair claim. IKEA reckons that if every single one of its customers replaced a single 60-watt lightbulb with the energy-saving alternative it would reduce carbon emissions by the equivalent of 750,000 cars.
But the company continues to stock ordinary light bulbs (where this is still legal), and here lies the conundrum. Like other mass-producers, IKEA could simply stop producing less energy efficient good and more environmentally-friendly ones but in doing so it would become more expensive, and this in turn could lead to the loss of customers.
The company is a business at heart, and so must keep up a constant balancing act between sustainability and profitability. Shopping at IKEA won’t save the planet but if you are strapped for cash and need to furnish your home it is probably the best choice available.
On the other hand, and I will admit that every now and then I too shop at IKEA (but will insist on solid wood every time, if it is a wooden product, obviously), why not buy your furniture secondhand? It does not all have to match. I actually make a habit of it to not match things.
Sustainability, when it comes to huge companies such as IKEA, Sainsbury's, etc., is a term that we have to consider carefully. While this or that executive may want to do this or that in the sustainability field the board and especially the shareholders may not go along with this.
And one thing that we, as customers and consumers, must always be on the lookout for is the famous greenwash such as the “Tetrapak” type of package used by Sainsbury's now for its chopped tomatoes (better for the environment they say), the use of plastic jars for peanut butter (also better for the environment, according to Sainsbury's, though I do not think so), or Coca-Cola's plant bottle which isn't. And this is but a small list.
As far as peanut butter is concerned, while I used to like Sainsbury's Basics Peanut Butter I will no longer buy it and that simply because it is in a plastic jar. I can do without additional chemicals in my PB. If I cannot find it in glass jars then I will forego it.
© 2011
