IKEA and RetourMatras Advocate For A Circular Economy

Ahead of the European Union elections in June and as part of the IKEA ambition to become a circular business, Ingka Group, the largest IKEA retailer, brought together policy makers as well as industry experts to discuss what is needed to remove barriers and to transition from a linear to a circular economy in Europe.  

It was held at RetourMatras, a mattress dismantling and foam recycling facility in the Netherlands to show circularity in action and share IKEA’s Policy Asks ahead of the next European Union elections (for 2024-2029).   

“We call for legislation that supports the development of the circular economy – with the existing solution from RetourMatras it is possible to take back every mattrass, 1.7 million, in the Netherlands and repurpose the material to be used again. This solution can be brought to many more countries with speed and scale, when we work together across government, society and companies – then we can assemble a greener and more sustainable future, says Jesper Brodin, CEO Ingka Group.

Moving to a circular economy is essential for us to continue to meet people’s needs and dreams while staying within the limits of one planet. Through our investment in RetourMatras we are on a journey to recycle the equivalent number of mattresses we sell by 2030. But we don’t stop there, RetourMatras is transforming end-of-life mattresses from waste to resource and transforming the materials to be reused. Not only is it smart from a business perspective, but it also has a huge impact on the climate footprint and can have a positive impact locally,” he continues.

RetourMatras is a leader in mattress dismantling – operating six dismantling facilities in the Netherlands and the UK. The company has been in operations since 2011 and through RetourMatras’ dismantling process, over 80% of the materials from a mattress can be recovered, including foam, textile, wood, and metal, and then be prepared for reuse.  

In 2019, Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group became a shareholder in RetourMatras and since then IKEA customers in Netherlands, Belgium and UK can take advantage of the mattress return service, that transforms the mattresses into valuable raw materials that are fed back into the economy including back into IKEA products.  

“We are proud of the progress we are making in this important sector. In 2023, we dismantled over 1 million mattresses, which saved over 76 million kgs of CO2 compared to incineration. This means we are liberating roughly 16 million kilograms of materials so that they can be reused – replacing fossil-based materials. We hope that by hosting a range of stakeholders and taking the result of these discussions back to EU policymakers we can showcase with authority the legislative changes needed. For example, facilitating the shipment of end-of-life mattresses across EU borders for recycling, is one element that will help us have more facilities like this in the EU. Banning the incineration of mattresses that are perfectly fit for recycling is another, and that is the case beyond mattresses”, says Chico van Hemert, Managing Director, RetourMatras.

Since Ingka Investments made its investment in 2019, the business has been actively looking to build more mattress recycling capacity throughout Ingka Group’s retail markets, and that includes ensuring there is sufficient recycling capacity in existing markets like the UK. Facilitating the transport of products like mattresses ready for recycling across EU borders remains a major challenge. It is one that national governments and the EU commission have the possibility to make easier, so more mattresses can find their way to facilities like RetourMatras.  

POLICY BARRIERS 

As part of its climate commitments, IKEA is committed to becoming a circular business and it wants to play its part in making the circular economy a reality. As the largest IKEA retailer, Ingka Group is exploring how it can best contribute to this shift, including enabling its customers to take part in more circular practices, and collaborating with stakeholders, including government policy makers to support policies that promote the transition to a circular economy, where the ambition is that resources are continually reused, regenerated, and eventually recycled in an unnecessary way. 

As part of that commitment Ingka Group is proactively engaging with policy makers around the world advocating for removing policy barriers to enable a more circular economy. In September 2023 IKEA joined the WBCSD to work on the development of a global circularity protocol and is asking European policy makers to consider the following policy asks to help drive change towards a more circular economy for businesses: 

High-Level policy asks include:  

• We want to disincentivize incineration when it is possible to recycle. We are burning resource waste that is perfectly good for recycling. We need to limit this. Not in 2035, but today. National laws could incentivize recycling over incineration as well as landfill.  
  
  
• Harmonize and modernize extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes across the EU – currently, for exactly the same product, we provide different data at different times from different parts of the business because of national EPR requirements. Not only that, but the schemes also deliver different – even arguably insufficient – low-levels of recycling of materials, even though the very purpose of EPR is to help pay for the most environmentally sound method of dealing with the material.  
  
  
• Facilitating the transport of resources like mattresses ready for recycling. In the recent Waste Shipment Regulation, the commission has the possibility to make it easier for mattresses to cross a border to be recycled. We ask national governments and the EU to make it easy for mattresses to move short distances so we can recycle more.  

Why we advocate for a net zero world – To read more information on Ingka Group’s climate advocacy and policy asks, please go to the climate advocacy page on Ingka.com here: Climate change advocacy | Ingka Group 

Source : Ingka Group and RetourMatras

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