IKEA exploring furniture recycling, leasing models
IKEA recently announced a number of pilot schemes in the UK and Europe —
including the sale of used, refurbished furniture; the rental of furniture, and
a textile-recycling scheme — as part of its ambition to evolve into a circular
business
and enable its customers to live a “sustainable life at
home.”
Since last year, customers in Edinburgh have been able to exchange used IKEA
furniture for a reward voucher; the returned items are then refurbished and sold
in the bargain area. The idea will be tested in Glasgow and the company is
considering expanding the scheme elsewhere.
In Switzerland, IKEA plans to being renting chairs, desks and other furniture
out to business owners, according to a recent report in the Financial
Times. The
pilot may begin as soon as this month and will serve as a trial to subscription
furniture rentals on a broader, perhaps international scale. Once customers
reaches the end of their rental period, IKEA will then refurbish the leased
furniture to be resold — similar to a UK program that already exists in the UK,
through which the company buys back and resells its used
furniture.
Along with rolling out more and more products made from recycled
materials,
Hege Sæbjørnsen, sustainability manager for IKEA in the UK, told The
Guardian,
“We are building the foundations towards [leasing and reuse] so we can scale
quickly.”
Everything you need to know about the state of play in molecular recycling
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IKEA is also launching a textile recycling scheme across the UK. The Swedish
home retailer began testing textile recycling in Cardiff, Wales nearly two
years ago — customers can bring in old clothes, curtains or other furnishing
fabrics to be repaired or cleaned, then delivered to a homelessness project or
recycled. In England, stores in Milton Keynes and Greenwich also offer
the service, and the company says it will extend to all UK stores over the next
few months.
Loll Designs outdoor furniture now Cradle to Cradle Certified™
Image credit: Loll Designs
Meanwhile, better outdoor furniture options here in the US recently
increased when Minnesota-based Loll Designs
underwent the rigorous process of becoming Cradle to Cradle Certified™.
Working with MBDC — originators of the Cradle to Cradle Design™
framework and the Cradle to Cradle Certified products program — Loll’s
products were evaluated on five categories: material
health,
material reutilization, renewable energy and carbon management,
water stewardship and social fairness.
Pursuing a Cradle to Cradle certification seemed like a natural path for
Loll to follow, as the company started by producing an Adirondack chair from
the waste from a skateboard ramp, from its former company, TrueRide.
Given Loll’s founding on this principle of efficient and responsible reuse
of manufacturing materials and guided by its vision to “Appreciate the
Outdoors,” C2C certification aligned well with the company’s philosophy.
Loll Designs is pleased to now have this certification, which will allow for
a deeper conversation with customers without them having to wade through a
huge stack of bill of materials. Currently the company boasts a collection
of 93 percent of its products as Cradle to Cradle Certified — Loll attained
Cradle to Cradle Certified SILVER rating overall for 84 percent of its
product line and BRONZE level for 9 percent — and the company says it will
work toward achieving a 100 percent certified product line in the coming
years. With many certifications out there, many being self-declared, Loll
felt Cradle to Cradle was one to pursue in that it demanded third-party
verification.
The ever-increasing market demand to know what’s in the products we buy has
encouraged adoption within the company to seek a third-party certification to validate its work, especially with programs
including LEED, Google Portico and Healthy Product Declarations
becoming more and more influential for customers and industry alike.
“Our customers from across all sales channels are inquiring about the
material makeup of our products, asking if they are truly safe for humans
and for the environment,” says Loll Designs founder Greg Benson. “Having
transparency with our company and our recycled products that we can share with our customers is the right
thing to do, and utilizing a respected, third-party certification like
Cradle to Cradle gives Loll credibility. Most importantly to us is that the
Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute not only certified Loll’s
products, but the process with MBDC lays the groundwork for how we can
continue to move our sustainability initiatives even further.”
Attaining a SILVER level on the material health category was an important
goal for Loll. While working with 100 percent recycled post-consumer
material is a positive asset, it can be challenging to know what’s in the
input
stream.
To ensure this achievement, MBDC worked closely with Loll’s HDPE supplier to
understand what materials they are accepting and how it is sorted. While the
input stream is primarily coming from food-grade bottles and consumer care
bottles, additional testing was done on the base resin material, to ensure
the input stream wasn’t being contaminated by heavy metals or
organohalogens, a class of chemicals that has been associated with
serious human health problems.
“Loll Designs has put incredible effort into their Cradle to Cradle
optimization process and overall design, and this work transcends industry by raising awareness of the materials and ways
manufacturers can work with supply chains,” said Jay Bolus, President of
MBDC. “In essence, the company has fine-tuned their material sourcing
process by working with its supply chain to improve the way manufacturing
partners make the products’ materials. We’re thrilled to have been able to
assist and guide the team on this
journey
for creating positively designed furniture.
The material reutilization category stipulates that materials must be
recovered and kept in continuous cycles. While Loll products are 100 percent
recycled, they are also 100 percent recyclable. However, the HDPE material
can’t be recycled with typical curbside recyclables — to ensure the
components get recycled properly, Loll encourages customers to send parts or
disassembled products back to the company, where it can remove the
stainless-steel hardware and aluminum inserts, recycle those, and then send
on the HDPE material to an industrial waste processing facility where they
can be repurposed into another useful product.
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Feb 13, 2019 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET