Ikea stores owner Ingka Investments is planning to extend its mattress recycling throughout Europe, Reuters reports.
Speaking on a panel at the Reuters IMPACT conference in London, the company’s managing director Peter van der Poel explained the Netherlands-based recycling strategy would be rolled out across Scandinavia, France and Belgium.
However, the exec warned it will remain cheaper to incinerate mattresses across many markets without changes to incentives.
The managing director said this would lead to no investment, which would be “totally destructive” in terms of moving to a society with widespread recycling.
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Van Der Poel said: “The thing here is to understand in many markets in Europe, still incineration is incentivised (over) recycling.
“So, we need to make sure that we also work together with the regulators and the governments to get the right incentives to do this, because we are ready to scale out”.
The news comes after Ikea piloted a “car boot sale” concept last week under a sustainability push.
If the pilot is successful, the initiative will be rolled out in Ikea car parks across the country in 2024.
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