Earth911 Podcast: IKEA's Mardi Ditze On Retailing's Path To The Circular Economy

IKEA is a global retail and furniture giant that has grown up with the modern era, defining a spare but elegant Nordic style that influences many of our homes. Mardi Ditze, IKEA's Country Sustainability Manager, joins the conversation to discuss how the company partners with customers to reduce, reuse, and recycle across its products' lifecycles. Mardi leads the IKEA team that is creating and implementing IKEA's climate goals, which include designing all products for a circular lifecycle, using renewable or recyclable materials in all its products by 2030, developing new circular services and the business models to support them, and collaborating with other organizations to lead the way to a sustainable economy by example.

Mardi explains the business benefits of IKEA's Buy Back and Resell program, which does not markup used goods when reselling them, and how providing free replacement parts deepens customer relationships. She also addresses global retailers' challenges when interacting with the fractured local recycling infrastructure in different U.S. communities. IKEA has partnered with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to develop a circular economy glossary, which integrates into its marketing, customer communications, and retail experiences. IKEA's massive, multifaceted stores may be a model for spurring local innovation simply through its ability to connect flows of materials to collection programs and processors that will keep wood, metal, glass, and more in use over many generations of products. You can learn more about IKEA and its sustainability efforts at https://www.ikea.com/us/en/this-is-ikea/sustainable-everyday/