Transparency


In 2006, Sustainable Industries reported on the company's sustainability initiatives and noted that Ikea’s strategy was to pursue "environmental and social initiatives with hardly a thought to communicating either goals or results to the public." Pontus Cerin, a research at Sweden's Environment Institute, told us, “Ikea is considered a company that cares about the environment and worker conditions within the supplier chain, but they don’t really advertise or promote their initiatives that much. ... They have their own systems and ways of doing things.”



Since that time, it seems, little has changed. IKEA did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story, and declined a specific request to interview Thomas Bergmark, the company's sustainability director. When Bergmark spoke with online environmental magazine Grist in February 2007, he said the company intended to beef up its communications around sustainability. "We will make information about our sustainability efforts more easily available to different stakeholders, including the customers in our stores," Bergmark told Grist. "That we are working on -- to be more transparent, to be more visible in these issues. It's expected from our customers."



To be fair, some progress has been made: a web site with information about the company's sustainability program, known as IWAY, quietly appeared through IKEA Canada, and in August 2008 the company released its 2007 Social & Environmental report with information about its progress toward achieving its 2009 targets.



But still, Ikea could stand further improvement at the point of sale. Many of the company's successful efforts rely on partnerships with other organization that would benefit from greater communication on the part of the blue and yellow behemoth. "If there is one significant fault we would find, it’s that they’re not labeling enough products," Forest Stewardship Council (U.S.) president Cory Brinkeman says. "What we’d like to see is, in addition to doing the right thing internally, it’s really important that they tell their customer what they’re doing and why they’re doing it."