Real people – the inspiration for real change
To live a more sustainable life, we all need to challenge ourselves. We need to change habits and explore new ways of doing things – both as a home furnishing business, as well as individuals – and together we make a difference.
At IKEA, we are on a change journey. We want to make healthy and sustainable living accessible for everyone. To do this, we need to understand the realities of our customers – how they live, the challenges they face, and what they need to make the changes they’re after. That’s why we spend a lot of our time going out into the world, collecting learnings that we use to improve our products and offerings. Meet three families we’ve visited that have made changes that can inspire others to make changes.
Meet Jenna
"I guess the change that happened in my life was partly induced by the pandemic when the world came to a halt. It helped me take a leap of faith and step away from the work I’d been doing for years, and instead starting my own business where I sell unique vintage furniture and consult on design projects.
Handing over my destiny to myself felt quite scary at first, but at the same time really empowering. Suddenly, I was the person who had to make things happen. Having faith in the process and trusting my own ability."
"I’ve always loved the world of pre-owned things – from the furniture I surround myself with to the clothes I wear. Things from the past have lived a long and secret life, it’s something I’m really drawn to, it makes an object feel more precious.
Two years ago, I made a rule for myself to avoid purchasing new clothes. I got to the point where I realised that I could have the same wardrobe year after year, it didn’t need to be constantly updated. And even though a clothing item is older than I am, it can still be so full of life."
Meet Ella and her husband David, her mother Kate, and daughter Coco
"We were both in the process of looking for new homes, and we decided that instead of buying two flats, to get one house and divide it into two. First, it made financial sense, but I was also expecting our daughter Coco. Having mom there just made life so much easier – both emotionally and practically.
There’s such a nice sense of community where we live – and as it turns out the entire street is full of multi-generational families living together. We’ve all become very close.
It’s so amazing for Coco to have all of us around, having her entire family so close. We do Saturday lunch together every week, it’s a nice tradition we have now. Living like this probably isn’t for everyone, obviously, but for us it’s a wonderful arrangement. And it seems like we’ve inspired some of our family and friends to do the same."
Meet Melissa and her husband Martin, and their son Walter
“Five years ago, I started getting signals from my body that I needed to change the way I was living. So, I started looking at my life, and if there was something I could do to feel better. Cleaning up my diet made a big difference and today I eat mostly plant-based. The benefits are many – it’s gentle on the planet, it's tasty and it’s affordable.
One of the biggest puzzle pieces that fell into place was daily exercise. It’s not an easy one when working full-time and having young kids. At first, I felt guilt about exercising during work hours. But I discovered that my performance is so much better after a proper workout, so it’s more than worth it. Looking back, being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition helped reshape my life in a better direction."
At IKEA, we want to enable positive changes. We are doing our best to improve our business through more sustainable materials, better ways to save energy, and reducing food waste – making sustainable living affordable and available to the many people.
We have introduced a family of plant-based products and in FY21 we introduced VÄRLDSKLOK, a plant-based mince. It’s a versatile meat-free mince option that can be used to make many dishes at home. You could say this is our most IKEA food product yet: assemble your own more sustainable meatball. We have also introduced the plant ball – a more sustainable alternative to the iconic meatball.
Lighting stands for 15 per cent of the world’s energy consumption. That’s why we took the decision to switch our entire range of lightbulbs to LED already in 2015. Now we continue the journey with the even more energy efficient LED bulb SOLHETTA. Compared to the current IKEA light bulb range LEDARE and RYET, SOLHETTA is on average 35% more efficient in energy.