In the Netherlands, furniture and homegoods giant IKEA has vowed to make a minimum of 20% of its mattress materials recycled or renewable by 2025.
With this initiative, IKEA aims to reduce foam ending up in landfill, decrease pollution, and drive the industry agenda to develop foam solutions centered around recycled materials.
“Since 2015 IKEA has been developing and implementing renewable content in our foam,” says Caroline McGarvey, Material & Innovation Area Manager for textile and comfort materials at IKEA of Sweden. “We are challenging the industry and working closely with our partners to find solutions that can increase the renewable content share in our foam products. In addition, we are now taking lead, together with our partners, in developing post-consumer recycled foam and a circular business model with the ambition to only use renewable or recycled materials by 2030.”
Polyurethane foam is usually made from virgin fossil-based content. Polyols, which is one of the main ingredients in foam, can be partially replaced by natural oil polyols from renewable sources such as soy, castor oil, rapeseed etc. Several products in the IKEA range already boast renewable polyol foam.
“There are still some challenges to overcome, and we are humble to the fact that it takes time for an industry to develop,” IKEA says. “What we can do already now to reduce our dependency on virgin fossil-based materials is to design our products to use less foam.”