|
|
The Swedish company, well known by students and recent graduates around the world, has pledged to go green by 2015.
|
|
IKEA, the Swedish company leader in affordable, yet considered high quality, home furniture, recently presented a new sustainability strategy to minimize the company's contribution to climate change by 50%.
The company has committed to work on five different areas: sustainable living, responsible use of resources, reduction in carbon footprint, social responsibility and operational transparency. According to the company, the goal is to meet this objectives by 2015, however the effort will remain a permanent one for IKEA.
IKEA receives millions of people in each of their stores every year. In the US and Europe, it is the most popular home furniture store, specially with young demographics fresh out of college. The company therefore seems to take this responsibility seriously, given the impact a global green campaign can have on the next generation.
According to the company's Global Sustainability Director, Thomas Bergmark, "taking IKEA's business model in which 'you do your part, we do ours, and together we save money,' our strategy is to promote cooperation between us and our customers."
During 2009, the European stores managed to reduce its energy consumption by 14%. Specifically, in Spain the company managed to produce 100% of its energy using renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal.
In terms of water consumption, IKEA said that in 2009, it managed to reduce overall consumption by 4.6%. The objective for the next five years is to achieve a total reduction of 25%.
According to the company, if only 1% of IKEA's customers substituted its appliances and incandescent bulbs with more efficient ones, the savings would be close to 31 GWh per year. This is equivalent to the total energy consumption of 8,000 European homes (approximately $30 million).
Source: IKEA
|
