What is IKEA’s policy on sustainable forest management?
Although IKEA does not own forests, we must engage with forests as wood is our main raw material. This is why we have foresters: a big step for a retailer, but we realise it is not enough to send forest tracing documents out to suppliers, we must be on the ground. Our long-term goal is to source wood only from verified well managed forests, and at present FSC is the only certification system that reaches a high-enough standard that fits the long term goal. IKEA was one of the first members of FSC in 1993 and we’re very strongly committed to it. However, my experience on the Swedish FSC working group taught me that even in a country where there is a strong solution-orientated approach, it takes a long time to achieve FSC certification, so we need to take a step-wise approach, and support our suppliers in making progress towards FSC. That is why we are working with a four-level staircase model. Level 1 is the entry ticket before we begin doing business with a supplier. They need to know
