Home furnishings giant Ikea (Delft / The Netherlands; www.ikea.com) said it plans to phase out plastics from its consumer packaging by 2028, with the first steps set to begin in 2025. The company told Plasteurope.com that the amount of such packaging currently in use totals 55,000 t, with the majority made of polyethylene, followed by PET.

“Ikea has already significantly decreased the amount of plastic used in packaging solutions,” the company said, noting that less than 10% of the total volume of packaging material used each year consists of the materials. About possible alternatives being considered, the company told PIE, “In line with our ambition to become a circular company, we will focus on paper in our packaging solutions as it is renewable, recyclable and one of the most recycled packaging materials in the world. However, we are equally open to exploring other materials and are currently looking at how food waste and seaweed, for example, can be converted into packaging material.”

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Erik Olsen, packaging and identification manager at Ikea of Sweden, said: “The shift will happen progressively over the coming years, and mainly be focusing on paper.” In 2018, the retailer announced plans to eliminate single-use plastics from its restaurants by 2020 (see Plasteurope.com of 14.06.2018).

However, the company noted that plastic “might” remain for packaging some of the company’s food products if needed, to meet quality and food safety standards beyond 2028, in which case, it will come from renewable or recycled sources. Dutch-based Ingka Group (Leiden; www.ingka.com), the holding company that owns the vast majority of Ikea outlets, and Finnish resin maker Neste, announced in 2018 that they would set up commercial-scale pilot production for bio-based polypropylene (see Plasteurope.com of 10.07.2018). The company’s first began cooperating on recycling in 2016.