MAMMUT Children's stool, indoor/outdoor/yellow

Sarah Pattison is an engineer at Children's IKEA who has worked with improving the MAMMUT series. For example, today the tables contain less plastic than when they were introduced. "Thanks to new technology, we could scale away some plastic inside the table top without compromising on its stability. This change hasn’t affected its look, but it means we use less material."

All MAMMUT parts are made of polypropylene, a plastic particularly suitable for children’s products. "When children play, their skin often comes in contact with things and that’s why the plastic we use always meets the world's highest set chemical requirements by a good margin,” says Sarah. But plastic is slowly broken down by the sun's UV rays, which can affect both color and quality when using the furniture outdoors. "When we understood that children like to carry the furniture outdoors, we reinforced the plastic with UV protection, which of course also complies with our chemical requirements."

The furniture also goes through annual safety tests. New knowledge about materials and safety constantly surfaces and needs to be adapted to. So why has MAMMUT survived for so long? "I think it's the cheerful colors and the appeal of shapes that feel like they came out of a comic book", says Sarah. "My daughters have used them for countless teatimes and building play forts over the years."

Plastic is most commonly derived from oil and gas, which are non-renewable fossil sources. These sources do not renew themselves and will eventually be depleted. Our ambition is that by 2030, all plastic used in our products will be based on renewable or recycled materials. Renewable plastic is made from materials such as vegetable oil, corn, wheat grain and sugar cane. Recycled plastic allows us to give a second life to non-biodegradable products such as PET bottles that would otherwise end up in landfill. Using recyclable sources also lessens our dependency on oil as a raw material. Currently more than 40% of our plastic products are based on recycled and renewable materials and our aim is to reach 100%. As we add products made from recycled and renewable materials to our offer, we hope to inspire other companies to do the same.

Single-use plastic items pollute ecosystems if not disposed of responsibly. As part of our commitment to people and the planet, all single-use plastic products from the global home furnishing range were phased out in 2020. This includes items such as plates, cups and plastic straws offered in our restaurants, bistros, and cafes. These were replaced by disposables made from 100% renewable sources.

Polythylene terephthalate (PET) and Polypropylene (PP) are durable, hygienic and shatter-resistant plastics. They absorb very little water and have good chemical resistance. Both PET and PP can be reused and recycled, which reduces waste and gives the product several lives through use and reuse. PET is the most recycled plastic in the world and can be used for many different purposes such as plastic bottles and containers for packaging food and beverages as well as for personal care products, pharmaceuticals and many other consumer products. At IKEA we mainly use recycled PET in boxes, filling material for textiles and kitchen front foil. PET is approved by health-agencies as safe to use for food and beverage. IKEA uses recycled PET that is post-consumer based, which means it is based on collected and sorted PET bottles.

IKEA takes product safety very seriously and all products are tested and comply with the strictest possible laws and safety standards on all IKEA markets. Customers should always feel confident that products bought at IKEA are safe and healthy to use. IKEA wants to minimize or totally refrain from the use of chemicals and substances that can be harmful to people and the environment.

Our journey towards only using recycled or renewable plastic will take some time and require new ways of doing things, but we are determined to take responsibility and find new solutions. We want to give our customers the possibility to choose products made from more sustainable materials that can be recycled again one day. Together, we can make a big difference!