IKEA Goes From Tax to Ban

Maybe it’s just personal bias based on their stylish furniture and tasty meatballs, but IKEA has always seemed to have a singular sense of practical-yet-extraordinary innovation. Example #1: my ridiculous indispensable Kitchen-in-a-Box set, awesome! Example #2: over a year ago (before it was popular!) IKEA was among the first companies to start advocating reusable bags. While still offering filmy disposable plastic bags, they would come at a price of five cents to help discourage overuse. Now, however, it’s all about to change — it has been announced that IKEA is phasing out the disposables.

The company set a goal last year of slashing plastic bag use by 50
percent from 70 million bags to 35 million in 12 months. To do this,
the company sold the plastic bags for a nickel, as well as reusable
bags for 59 cents.

Ninety-two percent of customers eschewed the plastic bags, the
retailer said. Now the company will pull plastic bags completely from
its U.S. stores in October, just as it did in the United Kingdom in
June, and in Australia in December. The company donated the proceeds –
more than $300,000 — from the sale of the plastic bags to America
Forests to plant trees.

Pernille Spiers-Lopez, president of IKEA North America, touts the plastic bag project as a success, stating that it “truly demonstrates that our customers care deeply about our global home and that we can all work together to be sustainable and environmentally responsible.” It truly is. Perhaps more companies should take notes from IKEA’s playbook — and if that just so happens to involve serving tasty meatballs for while you shop, then so be it. It’s all in the name of good business and a happier world.

Photo via Flickr!

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 at 9:59 am and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.