A report in The Times newspaper on Saturday said furniture giant IKEA uses a lower proportion of certified sustainable timber than some staff are claiming in its UK stores.
Reporter Ben Webster made the allegation after Times reporters, posing as shoppers, quizzed staff at two IKEA outlets, in Southampton and Edmonton in North London. The six people it asked, who included a store manager, said that all the timber in IKEA products was certified as sustainable.
The article claimed that, in fact, only 16% of the wood Ikea used in 2010 was certified under the Forest Stewardship Council scheme. This contrasted with 88% of timber sold by B&Q and 65% by Focus DIY. It also fell short of the target of 30% that IKEA set itself for years ago for 2009.
The Times said that Ikea also continued to purchase wood from areas where illegal logging was known to be a problem and “wood from uncertified forests in several countries, including China and Russia”.
IKEA global forestry manager Anders Hildeman defended the company’s policy of buying from areas where there might be illegal logging. He said that the company acted as an agent for change, encouraging sustainable forest management and inspecting its own suppliers annually.
“If every responsible company withdrew from these regions, you would leave it to the murky traders and there would be no force for improvement,” he said.
He said that Ikea had not hit its target on certified timber because of lack of availability and the fact that the company had grown and was selling more wood products overall.
The Times article mentioned only FSC-certified timber and did not say whether IKEA used wood certified under other schemes.
For more on this story see this week’s issue of TTJ
