Food Environment and Health

The Report of IKEA

(Waste Management)

IKEA, the world-famous Swedish furniture brand, brings its sleek minimalist design to Thai homes. Its 43,000sqm warehouse and showroom space on Bangna-Trad Road displays more than 7,500 furniture and home décor accessories for bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens outdoors and much more. IKEA Bangkok has two levels, and the starting point is on the second floor where all the big furniture and DIY parts are displayed in a gallery-style setup. At the end of the walk-through is a 700-seat cafeteria offering a limited selection of Asian and Western dishes. From the cafeteria, the stairs leads down to the first level where home accessories and smaller items are displayed in sections. Start from glassware, utensils and cooking accessories, then proceed along to lighting, bathroom accessories, decorative items (e.g. wall clocks, candles, picture frames, mirrors), small storage (e.g. baskets, bins, boxes, trays), gardening tools, upholstery, pillows, curtains, and much, much more. IKEA is in 38 Moo 6 Bangna-Trad Rd. (k.m. 8), Bangkaew, Bangplee, Samutprakarn. In this report will explain about the waste management in IKEA, such as products in IKEA, the waste form from that products and how to process or handle the waste of products.  

ü Sustainable Statment

Sustainability is a core business and sustainable statement is the case of IKEA. They said that sustainable statement wherever they are, they act with respect to exert apositive impact on people and on the limited resources of our planet to ensure long-term profitability. Sustainable statement in IKEA have 3 components, that consists of Economic profitable, Sustainability and Environment social. The total of price that they have to pay for it, is 5 milion baht per year.

IKEA have some sustainable strategies, that focus on:

o  Engaging more people, IKEA give many information to the customers, co-workers, suppliers, partners and authorities to know about the waste and sustainability strategies to get positif profitability.

o  Reduce climate impact, take a leading role towards a low carbon society with minimize the wastes.

o  Take social responsibility.

o  Turning waste resourcing and reducing our water footprint, the wastes also can be recycled become resources with this sustainable strategies.

ü The sources of waste management from

o  Operation

o  Product damage

o  Commercial waste

o  Restaurant, Co-worker canteen

ü How to handle wastes

1.      Waste prevention

After they can reduce the amount of waste generated in the first place, then disposing of it will automatically become simpler.

2.      Recycling

As many materials as possible should be recovered, preferably through recycling. Reprocessing be promoted, in particular recovery of waste as raw materials.

3.      Improving final disposal and monitoring.

The waste that can not be reused or recycle have to be safely incinerated and landfill have to only be used as a last resort.

All operation, production and packaging of goods lead to some kind of waste, and waste always impact the environment. Waste resorting is the most important step, like recycling area for plastics, general waste, wood and metal. The steps of waste sorting are Reuse, Recycle and Disposal. For Recycle and Disposal can be handled by Waste management company, that have own ways or strategies.

For example:

1)      Carboard for recycle, the process is done by be pressed to become paper with machine.

2)      Customer area, IKEA give many information to tell the consumer about wastes that sustainability is very important.

3)      Recovery, also the IKEA way, a system and method to prevent goods from getting damaged, and if products are damaged to generated the best revenue from products that would otherwise go to recycle.

ü Minimizing the waste

1.      Food waste.

To handle this waste, IKEA use machine call ECO.WIZ (wet system food waste decomposer) that contain of microbes to be good things and usefull, that break down the food into water in a 24 hours cycle and where only calcium remains. The primary function is to accelerate the natural decomposition process by maintaining optimal levels of aeration, moisture and temperature. Under this manipulated environment without soil and ground water contamination, their unique microorganisms safely decompose any food waste at an accelerated rate compared to natural decomposition.

2.      IKEA blue bag

IKEA provide blue bags for customer to minimize waste like plastic, it means that they can reduce the waste and engage the people to aware about sustainability.

3.      X’mas tree campaign

IKEA also have christmas trees for recycling, after IKEA use the trees they also return the trees.

ü Conclusions

Total waste recycle in IKEA around 70%. IKEA have many steps to handle their wastes and also have different way to handle it, such as use ECOWIZ machine for food waste and return the christmas trees. “Waste of resources is one of the biggest disease of man kind” said Inguard Kamprad as IKEA founder. The recovery waste of IKEA, that goods from exchange to return and goods from inside the IKEA store and have to be checking. IKEA store that work well with the Recovey process have approximately 25% higher net profits than that do not. They said if they have better recovery, it means that they also have better profitability.