The climate needs action, now

We all know the world is facing significant social and environmental challenges. We see and feel growing inequality, political instability, the impacts of climate change and resource scarcity that define our times. The pace and scale of these challenges are affecting the lives of our co-workers, communities and customers, as well as our business. 

Around the world, lifestyles are changing fast. Shifts in demographics, increasing urbanization, and a desire for affordability, convenience, digitalization and increasing awareness and concern for social and environmental issues are changing people’s behaviour.

We are eternal optimists and we are a part of finding solutions to these challenges. Good intentions are important. Words give them power. But to spark real change, its action that speaks loudest of all.

We have long passed the point of debating whether climate change is real. As individuals, as businesses, and as human beings, the time to act is now. 

IKEA aims to become people and planet positive and a critical part of that is the ambition to be a climate positive business by 2030. To help us get there we have set stretching science based targets to contribute to meeting the Paris Agreement. This target is critical for our business model and for our planet and we need to take decisions every day that have a positive impact on the climate. We want to inspire others with our actions, not with talk. 

We believe that climate change is most effectively tackled together with our customers and co-workers. Last year, we accelerated our target to zero emissions deliveries in five major cities – Amsterdam, Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Shanghai – by 2020. Today, all of our home deliveries in the inner city of Shanghai are completed by electric vehicles, meeting our zero emissions target more than a year ahead of time. Collaborating and partnering with the community and our service providers is an essential part of this success. 

Take renewables: we generated renewable energy equivalent to 81% of the energy used in our operations, and we are on track to reach our target of 100% renewable energy by 2020. We have more wind turbines than stores, 441 in 13 countries and 900 000 solar panels on the roofs of our stores and warehouses. 

And take lighting: in 2015, we switched our entire range of bulbs to more environmentally-friendly LEDs, making them affordable and available for the many. Since then we’ve sold 294 million of them. LED lightbulbs use up to 85% less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs and last for up to 20 years.  

The list of achievement is long and it is important that we communicate the things that we do in the IKEA value chain, to inspire and give hope of the change we want to be part of creating.  

We’re proud of the progress, however we still have so much to do. We are a big company with big responsibilities. I firmly believe that we must take action, using our size to scale good solutions and have a positive impact on both people and the planet. 

The gap between success and failure is not necessarily technology or know-how – we already possess many of the solutions to make the required shift. The thing that will make the difference is leadership – action leadership. 

At IKEA, we are starting with ourselves as we have a big responsibility in taking the lead to inspire others with bold action, and learning as we go so we can be even better tomorrow.  

But we cannot do this ourselves – there is no one person, company, organisation or NGO that can fix everything alone. Only by working collaboratively, putting our plans into action together, can we achieve meaningful change and impact.

As our founder Ingvar Kamprad used to say: “No method is more effective than a good example.”