IKEA is a long-time participant of the Pittsburgh Green Workplace Challenge (GWC). Jennifer Stockdale shares her insights with Sustainable Pittsburgh on questions about trends driving IKEA’s sustainability initiatives that are relevant and all businesses should be watching, and what leaders would be surprised to know about IKEA’s sustainability challenges.
– With IKEA a global sustainability leader, what is a macro trend driving IKEA’s sustainability initiatives that is widely relevant and all businesses should be watching?
It is important that sustainability initiatives are not just limited to how you handle trash and energy. Sustainability is about caring for all of our resources: energy, materials, human and capital. IKEA follows the UN Sustainable Development Goals which serve as a roadmap for a cleaner, fairer world. IKEA uses the 17 UN goals to aid in developing sustainable strategies that will encompass all we can do for our planet and its people.
– What would leaders be surprised to know about IKEA’s sustainability challenges?
Leaders would be surprised to know how many different facets there are to IKEA’s sustainability goals, from making sure suppliers have the support they need to produce great IKEA products, to energy and resource use, more efficient stores, product packaging and trucking. Plus IKEA has the ultimate responsibility of helping customers to be able to live a more sustainable life at home by producing both products that can help them achieve their own sustainability goals and ensuring that all of the products they purchase from IKEA are sourced and produced in a more sustainable way.