3 questions to Johanna Nordell at IKEA Sweden

Johanna Nordell, Head of Sustainability at IKEA Sweden, answers three questions.
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2023-05-29

1. Ikea has long been on the top list for Sweden's most sustainable brand, what is your focus today to continue to be at the forefront?

Caring for people and the planet is one of our core values that guides us in how we work and make decisions - everything from product development to how we collaborate with each other. We continue to place high demands on ourselves and set clear goals that drive us to do more and become even better at what we do.

Some focus areas are electrification, where we are building 700 new charging points for electric cars and increasing the number of fast charging stations in Sweden by 18 percent. Offshore wind power is another, where the government has just given the go-ahead to build the Galene wind farm outside Varberg with 21 wind turbines planned from our partner OX2 and IKEA. We continue to develop our second-hand market where we are pleased that IKEA Second Hand at ReTuna Återbruksgalleria, the world's first second-hand store for furniture and home furnishings from IKEA, has been extended for two more years.

"We know that our customers want to live more sustainably - that's why we're investing in strengthening the second-hand offer in our stores, taking the lessons learned from ReTuna to create an attractive offer for our customers. We are only at the beginning of a journey, but also in an extremely exciting time where both our customers and society expect a change and we want to make that journey together with them.
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2. What knowledge about sustainability is important to have if you work atIKEA?

General important qualities when working at IKEA are to be curious, fearless and love to collaborate. Curiosity is about listening, learning and sharing both in science and social issues both here and now but also thinking 10 years ahead. We need to navigate in a changing field where we are constantly exploring, trying out new ideas and we must dare to venture into the unknown sometimes.

We don't possess all the knowledge ourselves, but together with our partners and other large companies we can COLLECT and drive innovation and development. So a strong collaboration is crucial for us to be able to identify and implement circular business models and initiatives.
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3. What does the circular economy primarily mean to you at Ikea?

The circular economy for us includes many different components from product design and development, material selection, production, transportation, operation, sales... the list is long. In recent years, we have also made great efforts to extend the life of our products. For example, through our so-called circular shops in the department stores where we buy back our products every day.

We want to do what we can to make it easy to give products a second chance - where they can be reused, renovated or remanufactured into something new. Our customers are so incredibly creative, which is great! The circular economy is not only an opportunity for IKEA, but also our responsibility to drive and develop it. It is the new norm and also the new low price.



Here you can read more about IKEA's sustainability work:
https://www.ikea.com/se/sv/this-is-ikea/climate-environment/hallbarhetsstrategin-pa-ikea-pubfea4c210