DUBAI: As the world prepares for World Earth Day, IKEA, a part of the Al-Futtaim Group and the regions favourite Swedish home furnishing retailer has launched a campaign aimed at inspiring people to lead a healthy and sustainable life, promoting circular and sustainable consumption and creating a movement around better everyday. The campaign highlights the importance of practicing sustainability in the many homes thereby leading by example for the future generation.
With the ambitious aim of inspiring and enabling more than 70 million people in the region to live a better everyday life by 2025, Al-Futtaim IKEA pledges to design every product from the very beginning to be reused, refurbished, remanufactured and eventually recycled, by applying its circular product design principles during the product development process.
Commenting on the campaign, Vinod Jayan, Managing Director at IKEA, UAE, Oman and Egypt said, ‘‘Earth Day is an important event for the many. The day is dedicated to people growing more conscious of the way they live, thereby creating awareness about the various environmental challenges that face our planet. At IKEA, we always strive to make life at home better for the many people. Sustainability is a very important part of our brand and we offer a range of products that are not only sustainable but also affordable, attractive, and accessible for the many. So good in fact, that it’s what nature would use, if nature were in your place, living in your house. Therefore, our campaign this year tells the story of a regular family – a mother, father, and child, except the mother is a charming eco-conscious polar bear. We follow a day in the life of this family and see the mother’s quest to show her family how to live in a way that does not harm the environment.’
To help fulfil the IKEA vision and ambition to become people and planet positive, the brand has identified three focus areas; Healthy and Sustainability Living, Circular and Climate Positive and Fair and Equal rights.
Healthy and Sustainable Living
Globally, people are becoming more concerned about their health and the health of the planet. Supporting UAE’s Vision 2021 that focuses on improving environmental quality, increasing the contribution of clean energy, and implementing green growth plans, Al-Futtaim IKEA is creating a movement in society around better everyday living. Firstly, it phased out and replaced products with new innovative solutions in order to contribute to a more sustainable society and safer homes. In addition to removing all single-use plastic products from the stores in January 2020, all non-rechargeable alkaline batteries will be phased out by July 2021 with a complete takeover of LADDA rechargeable batteries. It is of utmost importance for people to acquire, care for and pass on products in circular ways thereby prolonging the life of products and materials. As such, IKEA stores in the UAE have converted its ‘AS IS’ section, that sold over AED 25 million worth of furniture in 2020, to a Circularity Hub, an area where customers can experience IKEA’s circular business through its efforts in minimizing waste produced from furniture. It offers an attractive range of IKEA products at affordable prices as well as inspires and enables customers to make more sustainable choices in their everyday lives.
In the past years, the brand has also seen a demand for spare parts. In 2020 alone, Al-Futtaim IKEA provided more than 7,000 spare parts to enable customers to prolong the life of IKEA products.
Circular and Climate Positive
By 2030, Al-Futtaim IKEA is committed to becoming climate positive. This is possible by promoting sustainable choices and transforming into a circular business, striving towards 50% renewable energy across its operations and using more sustainable materials and food ingredients in its food range.
To secure 50% renewable electricity, Al-Futtaim IKEA has invested in renewable electricity generation in the UAE by covering the rooftops of stores and parking area. IKEA Dubai Festival City Mall fulfills 65% of its energy needs by using solar energy and since opening IKEA Dubai Festival Plaza in Jebel Ali, it has contributed 18% to the overall share of renewable energy. By switching a part of its energy needs to solar, Al-Futtaim IKEA generated 3,600,851 Kwh of solar energy which is equivalent to over one million liters of gasoline. The same energy could be used for charging over 310 million mobile phones.
Al-Futtaim IKEA is also supporting the UAE’s commitment to meeting the global target to cut food waste by 50% by 2030 in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal. About one third of all food that’s produced every year is wasted. Al-Futtaim IKEA aims at reducing food waste by 10% year-on-year with a target of reducing food waste in production by half and restaurant wastage by one-third by 2025.
Customer travel and home deliveries account for 6% of the total IKEA value chain climate footprint. By 2030, Al-Futtaim IKEA’s goal is to reduce the Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) from customer travel and home deliveries by 50%.
Between 2016 and 2020, the climate footprint of products used at home decreased by 26.7%. This was mainly driven by improving the energy efficiency of already existing energy efficient LED bulbs. In 2020, Al-Futtaim IKEA sold 825,000 bulbs with the aim of bringing this up to one million in 2021 and two million by 2025.
In November 2020, IKEA launched the plant balls that has the look, taste and juicy bite of the IKEA meatball but does not contain any animal protein or ingredients and is only 4% of the climate footprint.
For more information on IKEA’s sustainability goals, please visit https://about.ikea.com/en/sustainability
