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IKEA buys 11,000 acres of U.S. forest to keep it from being developed
- fy20 6y agoSomewhat related. IKEA is the largest owner of forests in Lithuania (around 33% of the total land area is forest): https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1104260/ikea-the-biggest-forest-owner-in-lithuania https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1104260/ikea-the-bi... At the time of this article (2019), they owned 66,000 acres of forest in the country.
- melomal 6y agoDamn, love these little/random facts about my mother country.
- oblio 6y agoWell, if it helps, they're the biggest land (forest?) owner in Romania, too. They own something like 50 000 hectares. It's probably not 1/3rd of Romania, we're a bit bigger :-p
- trymas 6y agoOP meant, that LTU has about 1/3rd of forests of it's land area. Ikea is the biggest owner of forests at 270sq.km. Whole LTU area is around ~65000sq.km., i.e. forests a bit more than 20000sq.km.
- oblio 6y agoYeah, I understood that. I was just saying that Ikea owns a lot of forests in Romania, too.
- trymas 6y agoFor someone who does not know how much is an acre: 66k acres is ~27k hectares or 270sq.km.
- perilunar 6y ago> 66k acres is ~27k hectares That's a strange way to put it. More obviously, 1 acre ~= 0.4 hectares or ~4000 m² Alternatively, 1 hectare ~= 2.5 acres
- dmurray 6y agoThis seems a little misleading. 66,000 acres would be 270 sq km, 33% of the country is 22,000 sq km so IKEA owns just over 1% of the forested land. IKEA is the largest private forester but most of Lithuania's forests are owned by the state [0] and overseen by various state bodies, some of whom operate them as commercial concerns including, almost certainly, selling timber to IKEA. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forests_in_Lithuania https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forests_in_Lithuania
- Darmody 6y agoI don't think he means IKEA owns 33% of the forest. 33% is the total percentage of forest and IKEA is the bigger single owner of forests. Two separate statements.
- dmurray 6y agoSure. But it really means IKEA is the biggest single owner of forests, apart from the owner who owns 40 times as much as IKEA does.
- resu_nimda 6y agoLithuania is about 16 million acres, so that would be about 0.4% which is a lot but doesn’t seem too far out of the ordinary. There are 50,000 and 60,000 acre tracts owned by separate logging companies near me, and that’s a small part of one county in northern California. Point being that 10,000 acres isn’t actually as much land as it sounds like, when it comes to forest land.
- kleiba 6y agothe forest was bought by IKEA as part of a strategy to reduce more carbon than it creates through its value chain They might want to write that into their books, but note that by buying an existing forest, no additional CO2 reduction is achieved on a global scale.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoIts yearly co2 consumption that they are responsible for sustaining. The plants are already consuming co2, this way that will continue to be the case.
- carpdiem 6y agoForests are not perpetual carbon sinks, as trees eventually die and then decompose, releasing their carbon back into the atmosphere. At best, a young and growing forest can be a temporary carbon sink, until it reaches maturity (and steady state). Alternatively, a forest might support continual carbon sinking if and only if the recently dead and/or mature trees were somehow harvested and treated/stored in such a way that their carbon would not decompose and re-enter the rest of the biosphere.
- teekert 6y agoYes. We should build more using Wood and less using Concrete.
- fladrif 6y agoIs that accurate? I can't believe that decomposition releases _all_ of the carbon into the atmosphere. Certainly a good amount of it is sequestered into the ground (e.g. coal). Thus a standing forest is never completely carbon neutral.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoBroadly speKing, it is - coal does not really form on the timelines relevant to human civilisation
- andy_ppp 6y agoHow much would buying all the Brazilian rain forest cost the world, or even renting it from Brazil? We would need it to be slightly more than cattle farming to work... but I’d happily pay towards this.
- faceplanted 6y agoYou wouldn't just need to buy them, you'd also need to police and monitor them constantly, if you bought them from abroad without further intervention unscrupulous people would just move in and start working the land anyway, and if you can figure out how to police it better than they can you might just be better off developing that.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoI read an article commenting on "microlending", which came to the conclusion that the concept doesn't really work. Your loan of $3.50 might really mean something to the peasant who receives it. But it means nothing to you, and so microloans end up with no one vetting the borrower for creditworthiness or hassling them to collect. This incentive mismatch ends up spoiling the project; there's no reason for someone not to take out a microloan, drink the money away, and default. There's a similar problem with your idea. You could buy a stretch of land in Brazil and bask in the glow of taking it off the market. But the problem you perceive with overuse of the Brazilian rainforest wouldn't be solved; that land was mostly not on the market anyway. How would you stop farmers from encroaching on your land? A "No Trespassing" sign won't do the job. Buying land to prevent development will work better in the US, mostly because there's no one in the US who lives off the land. You can't stop small farmers from moving on to your unsupervised land. But you can easily stop giant logging or mining companies from doing it.
- Dylan16807 6y agoBut they weren't suggesting individual purchases. A very large group doing a very large purchase can buy cost-effective security.
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- danjc 6y agoI wonder whether across spans of decades you should be more trusting of governments or companies to preserve the environment.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fimdomeio 6y agoI have a problem with IKEA. Aren't those peaces of furniture made of composite materials and those not so sturdy shelves a sustainability problem when compared to traditional furniture making which is mostly wood glue a protective coat which lasts for hundreds of years can be infinitely repaired in a workshop with some basic tools. And then it it all ends it can became firewood, which ikea furniture can't. Shouldn't they start fixing the world there?
- namdnay 6y agoThere seems to be a misconception that Ikea is all cheap composite. It's really not true, they cover a wide range, and they have full-wood models for nearly all product categories Obviously most people buy the cheap stuff, but that's the case of any low/medium end furniture chain really
- ornornor 6y agoThey have pieces that aren’t particle board. These pieces are the lowest quality pine they could find. It’s super soft so it’s very easy to put a dent in and it’s not particularly well protected either so you end up throwing it away after a while as well. Maybe not as soon as the particle board junk but not much later either. Ikea used to be well made and decent quality 20 years ago. It all went downhill from there and now most of their furniture gets damaged by just looking at it.
- bombcar 6y agoIt's literally glued together "scrap" wood - which can work fine - but it is also susceptible to "drying" damage - I have a Hermes shelf that is more like a U than a _ now.
- adrian_b 6y agoYes, indeed, Ikea furniture covers a wide range. For example, my most recent purchase from Ikea was one year ago, when I bought a couple of tables made of steel, on which I keep some E-ATX computer cases. Those steel tables look like they should last more than a human lifetime.
- piokoch 6y agoThis smells like some really bold and really ridiculous PR attempt. "Ikea uses about one percent—yes, one percent—of the world's entire commercial wood supply. That amounts to about 17.8 million cubic yards of lumber last year. " [1] I guess they need this PR purchase to appease some eko organization. And this is equally ridiculous. Ikea is making furniture, something people really need. Why they have to explain themselves for doing something useful? What should they use to produce furniture? Would plastic be any better? Iron? Stone? [1] https://inhabitat.com/one-percent-of-all-the-worlds-commercial-wood-is-used-to-make-ikea-products/ https://inhabitat.com/one-percent-of-all-the-worlds-commerci...
- loceng 6y agoIt's because they're fighting the arguably true reality that the majority of their furniture is designed to be disposable, and consumers are generally fine with that. I'd like to be wrong, though until we require companies to be responsible for all costs associated with the full lifecycle of a product so externalized costs are incorporated, we're not going to develop the most sustainable practices.
- xyzzy123 6y agoI think this is not as easy a calculus as one might imagine. Heirloom furniture is in some ways less sustainable than Ikea products. I am not sure there would be enough sustainable hardwood in the world to meet demand at the scale of Ikea. People have different furniture needs than they did decades ago, and in terms of weight, logistics, material use, Ikea are quite efficient.
- helmholtz 6y agoThe complication is EXACTLY why we need to be even more in panic and hair-on-fire about environmental issues. A colleague did some analyses for the life cycle emissions of refrigerants. The complexity in the process was absurd, and basically intractable without simplifications. How much indirect CO2 emissions are caused by an inefficient compressor? How much does it depend on how you generate electricity? Which country were the gaskets manufactured in? What was the process used to extract the rare earths? Everything depends on everything else and consequences are pretty unknown.
- throw8932894 6y agoIf you avoid paying taxes, it is easy to be charitable. Wikipedia: > The IKEA group has a complex corporate structure, which members of the European Parliament have alleged was designed to avoid over €1 billion in tax payments over the 2009–2014 period.[14][15] It is controlled by several foundations based in the Netherlands and Liechtenstein.[16][17]
- ATsch 6y agoThe most indisputable proof to me of our nonprofit and charity systems being complete bullshit has always been the fact that IKEA is a nonprofit "to promote better interior design".
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- randunel 6y agoMeanwhile, in Romania, IKEA owned (through "Vastint") Băneasa Forest is being redeveloped into a 476k sqm (118 acres) residential area. My point here is, once they own the forest, they may choose to redevelop it any any time.
- CodinM 6y agoYet they're buying shady wood from countries in the Eastern Block in Europe.
- devops000 6y agoIt could be viewed as an investment to hedge upcoming inflation?
- thomasfl 6y agoIkea has been buying large pieces of land in rainforest for years. Why? It can come in handy one day to be able to break the newspapers about how Ikea is saving the rainforest. Especially if shit hits the fan and the newspapers starts publishing bad news about Ikea.
- olavgg 6y agoTim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games also own forests to keep them from being chopped down!
- johnnycerberus 6y agoNot implying that this is corporate propaganda to cater to the US public, but something similar happened to my country where saving the planet is not on the agenda of its citizens since there are other problems that need to be solved first. [1] "IKEA’s goal is to purchase wood which is 100 per cent FSC-certified from these countries. At the same time there are many indications that forests with high conservation values are being logged by FSC-certified companies. FSC-certification is far from a guarantee for socially- and environmentally friendly forestry and FSC has received serious criticism from many environmental organizations, both in Sweden and internationally. Several environmental organizations have left FSC in protest. " [2] So practically, you have a situation where IKEA acts on some shady rules established by this FCS that are unreliable. Moreover, countries with corrupt officials will eventually end up in prison but too late, before the harm is done. Generally, if as a Romanian I go outside to protest against IKEA and corrupt politicians exploiting the Carpathians, I'm told that I don't respect private property and that IKEA acts according to the laws of that country (created by corrupt policians with shady lobbies), in the end IKEA becomes the victim. [1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ikea-buys-83000-acre-forest-in-romania-to-make-furniture-7g6bgk9fphj https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ikea-buys-83000-acre-fore... [2] http://skyddaskogen.se/en/news/4852-ikea-s-forest-in-romania-could-be-stolen http://skyddaskogen.se/en/news/4852-ikea-s-forest-in-romania...
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago"countries with corrupt officials will eventually end up in prison" Majority never will, see Navalni exposing theft after theft and ending up in jail himself.
- johnnycerberus 6y agoThat is indeed a very sad reality in this part of the world. Since the fight against corruption that started with Romania's integration into the EU, things are a little bit better. Politicans are now held accountable but too late. We are mostly reactive instead of preventive.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoEveryone hating on Ikea quality in the comments - but they do make some well-designed item, even out of stainless steel - that will last. But most people seem to be buying that £5 coffee table out of paper.
- jamisteven 6y agoThis is laughable, they do this all the time in Romania just to chop down half the trees to build shitty bookshelves.
- pembrook 6y agoTrees are a renewable resource. They grow back! And those shitty bookshelves are way more biodegradable than if they were made out of any other material like plastic. Proper forestry practices are much more common today even in developing countries than you think.
- xuhu 6y agoIt's because eastern european forests are cheap: https://www.romania-insider.com/schweighofer-sells-forests-romania https://www.romania-insider.com/schweighofer-sells-forests-r...
- dbuder 6y agoCynical Dutch charity buys a headline.
- napier 6y agoManufacturing and building things out of sustainably managed forestry is one of the best ways to sequester carbon while making a profit and producing products people use and value.
- Darmody 6y agoThey have been profiting from illegal logging for years if not decades. https://www.channel4.com/news/investigation-thousands-of-trees-illegally-felled-to-build-ikeas-flat-pack-empire https://www.channel4.com/news/investigation-thousands-of-tre... And they also bought entire forests through corrupt companies. http://skyddaskogen.se/en/news/4852-ikea-s-forest-in-romania-could-be-stolen http://skyddaskogen.se/en/news/4852-ikea-s-forest-in-romania...
- throwaway2245 6y agoIt makes me feel sad that this basic and cheap greenwashing gets more attention than anything environmentally critical. Here's IKEA's original Press Release which has been worked into this "news" article. The original PR actually has much more clarity: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/this-is-ikea/newsroom/ingka-investments-acquires-forestland-in-united-states-from-the-conservation-fund-pub70656d40 https://www.ikea.com/us/en/this-is-ikea/newsroom/ingka-inves... IKEA makes it clear that the forest was formerly owned by a conservation group and was seemingly not in danger of being developed, contrary to the headline here.
- radres 6y agoI wish IKEA was public so I could buy some shares. Not because of this news necessarily, I do not see much value with this move but in general I can see that their business works amazingly here in Europe.
- seeyacall 6y agohello, i am glad to contact you I am from Seeya video chat app to make friends and share your life with peiple worldwide. we invite you to download it to try to meet new people and get relationship advice via video chat! Click this link : http://www.seeya.video/ http://www.seeya.video/
- ohduran 6y ago>IKEA is continuing to try and remain true to their principals—protecting the environment and striving to become a carbon neutral company, while still remaining one of the world’s most pleasurable shopping experiences. They lead the article with THAT? #redflag
- isthisnametaken 6y ago"IKEA is continuing to try and remain true to their principals—protecting the environment and striving to become a carbon neutral company, while still remaining one of the world’s most pleasurable shopping experiences." Written by someone who has clearly never been to an IKEA.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoSome people actually love it! Some people really view it as a day trip. Especially the showroom part. I always skip that entirely :P I know, I don't know how someone can love it either.. I hate the way they have these predefined paths so you can't quickly get what you need. And if you try to use the shortcut they make it as difficult as possible. Usually I pick everything online and find out the storage locations, and just walk in through the checkouts to get what I need straight from the warehouse. Only issue is that some of the smaller knicknacks are only on the shop floor :(
- m463 6y agoWe don't mind the food - meatballs and lingonberry soda! However they've designed the store to TRAP YOU and make you go through the "shopping gauntlet" to exit.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoTrue, when I was a consultant on the road I'd eat there all the time. Quick, cheap and much better than McDonalds. And also near the highway most of the time. Usually I'd try to walk out through the entrance after :) Most of the time this worked fine.
- smileybarry 6y agoI like it! The huge selection and tens of showrooms are really cool. I especially like their "whole apartment" demos, like maximizing use out of a small apartment without making it cramped. It's definitely not for everyone, my sister hates the "gauntlet" (as someone else here called it) and how busy it gets.
- timwaagh 6y agoThat's called a strategic reserve
- maxerickson 6y agoJust for scale, one of the 3 national forests in my region is about 900,000 acres. It's not really restricted from development, but it's land that no one is in any hurry to develop.
- lettergram 6y agoGotta say that isn’t that much land, I’ve been looking at land with a couple friends. I can get 1,000 acres of land with lumber for probably $800-$2000 per acre. Really depends where, just saying 11,000 acres really isn’t much.
- gautamcgoel 6y agoIn what state were you looking?
- nom 6y agoI never understood why people hate IKEA. Yes it's cheap. Yes it doesn't last a lifetime. Yes it needs a lot of wood. Yes it's highly optimized. But guess what, IKEA is a business responding to the needs of people. The negatives that are mentioned frequently are merely a symptom of our ever faster developing society. The people who complain are the same ones that just buy cheap crap from china without even thinking about it. IKEAs ability to produce products that people actually need, at such a scale, is amazing to me. It does what it promises. It's cheap. It fills most people's needs fully. Customer support is perfect. I know in 10 years replacements for their core products will still be available. Their way of innovating the products is genius. I can't think of any other company that even comes close. Well, maybe LEGO.
- vilius 6y agoI have IKEA socks (probably illegally made by https://theholeinmysock.com/shop/women/ikea-socks/ https://theholeinmysock.com/shop/women/ikea-socks/) and tend to wear them in summer. People often compliment me for this odd choice of socks. Others find it confusing. However when I ask them if they prefer IKEA or LEGO as a brand they still choose IKEA. Statistically insignificant but I thought I’d still share.
- chrisseaton 6y agoIt's the junk food of furniture. Produced at scale with poor materials, satisfies people's immediate need, locations are functional and service is fast. But don't you want something more substantial and created with more craft? You probably don't need more than one adult bed in a lifetime, for example. I've got furniture that's been in use hundreds of years.
- enkid 6y agoThat's great if it meets your needs, but I don't think that's a good argument for why other people shouldn't have the option to buy stuff from Ikea. Population growth alone dictates there's not enough furniture from a hundred years ago for everyone to furnish their homes.
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- throw14082020 6y agoIs this good or bad? Imagine an oil company buying up large oil fields, and they say, to stop oil production. They just bought resources they can do whatever they want with.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoWhy make an analogy with oil companies? Ikea uses a renewable resource (wood, from tree farms), then goes further and buys a natural forest for conservation reasons. ikea doesn't need to buy the forest for the wood.
- throw14082020 6y agoWhat I mean is buying land is not a commitment to anything good or bad. It just means they can now use the land for anything they want. > ikea doesn't need to buy the forest for the wood This is a great investment, and this is business. It is ridiculous to think they're buying it just to offset their footprint.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bamboozled 6y agoHope they do the same in Brazil!
- arbitrage 6y agowow, a pittance from a muilti-billion dollar global corporation. are you impressed? cause i'm not.
- liminal 6y agoThis seems like a failure of government.
- jeffbee 6y agoThat's a pretty small forest by American standards but buying up forests or any kind of open land with the intent to spare them from being wrecked by another sprawling exurb is a great thing to do. Similar work has been done by various open space preservation funds and land trusts in California. As a climate strategy it's not really even about the forests, it's about the exurban Americans who are the greatest threat to the global climate.
- unixhero 6y agoSame as Norwegian govt. rain forest fund did in Brazil. Good on you Ikea!
- alexggordon 6y agoNot disparaging IKEA at all--moves like this should be lauded--but this is a working forest, harvested for lumber. I can't speak to how sustainably it's harvested or anything, and while this is commendable, there is profit motive here, as IKEA is heavily dependent on wood for its products. I think in general, supporting things like working forests from a government level (tax benefits) is probably something that isn't done enough, given forests are one of the best carbon sinks available to us.
- altacc 6y agoIt's a good point to raise, as a working forest is quite different to a protected forest. Where I live is surrounded by working forest and regularly a large swathe will be felled, having a big impact on wildlife and taking at least a couple of decades for that land to recover. That's good for carbon sequestration, which is what Ikea wants it for, but not so good for the forest residents.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago11,000 acres is about equal to a square property 4 miles on each side. It's a noble gesture, and the best outcome would be to motivate others to do the same. Makes me wonder how much property could be bought for preservation with a Go Fund Me?
- scohesc 6y agoIKEA buys 11,000 Acres of U.S. Forest to diversify their assets, uses climate change as a PR booster
- kstenerud 6y agoNews reel: - Big company/person X is does beneficial thing Y HN: - It's just a PR stunt! - It's a ploy to leverage something else and make more profit! - It's so tiny that it doesn't even make a difference! If they REALLY cared they'd do A, B, C... - They're actually doing Y to accumulate Z for some nefarious purpose! - I once did some interaction with X or their products and it went poorly! - X has skeletons I, J, and K in their closet! Watch out! - Man, what's with all the X haters on HN today? - Hoo boy, here come the X fanboys!
- crisdux 6y agoI don't understand this critique. Corporate PR is largely propaganda. Our corporatist media isn't willing or able pursue actual journalism to find out the truth, so now we have lot's of people searching for answers on a forum that allows for free speech. If you don't like it, you should probably just stick to cable news.
- abvdasker 6y agoI think you're largely correct, but sometimes corporations can end up doing the "right thing" in the pursuit of good press or to serve brand marketing. I would say that IKEA doing environmental conservation is a good thing in this case, despite the company's motives for doing so being transparently self-serving. To me IKEA's reason for doing this is less important than the positive impact it will have.
- crisdux 6y agoYea I understand what you are saying. I think it's hard in our current environment to understand trade offs because there isn't a lot of truth or trust in journalism or corporate propaganda. It's impossible to make a value determination of this action because we don't have the truth. I don't think people should just assume it's a positive impact without all of the facts. It could very well be a negative. You seem to be only focused on one dimension of this, forest conservation.
- Milkman128 6y agoThank you IKEA
- t_minus_3 6y agoI read something like - Butcher buys 1000 cows to keep them away from slaughter house.
- exabrial 6y ago~17 square miles, that's a sizable purchase. The _real_ benefit would occur if they manage it correctly (simulating natural forest fires with sustainable logging practices) and harvest the carbon that is captured so more carbon can be captured.
- antattack 6y agoThere's no alternative to IKEA and, personally, I don't mind. Although, I have to admit that IKEA was better in the early years.
- BurningFrog 6y agoSince I had to look it up: 11,000 hectares is 45 km²
- sp1rit 6y agoWait, I don't get it. Is that satire or not?
- davidparks21 6y agoI'm excited to see a goodnewsnetwork.org article make it to the top of hacker news. This site has become a favorite of mine.
- joshxyz 6y agoDamn is IKEA the next Felix Dennis, great times.
- thimkerbell 6y agoDoes it scale?
- tahoeskibum 6y agoHere's the link to Economist article from 2005, which explains how IKEA uses non-profit status. I frequently buy from IKEA but used to think of it a well oiled corporation, and didn't know that it was "non-profit". https://www.economist.com/business/2006/05/11/flat-pack-accounting https://www.economist.com/business/2006/05/11/flat-pack-acco...
- worldvoyageur 6y agoIt's none of my business if Ikea wants to buy productive forest land and take it out of production. However, I don't understand how it is any kind of signal of virtue. Would it be virtuous to buy productive farm land and take it out of circulation? How is forest land any different? In a previous life, it would be broadly correct to say that I worked in the forest industry. My body still hurts when I think about it. I worked for wood lot owners, felling trees, trimming off the branches, sectioning the logs, splitting the wood and then stacking it to be sold by the cord. These woodlots had been in operation for over 150 years. Same land, different trees. They still operate now. I also worked as a tree planter, hired by small contractors working for 'big forest'. Us tree planters went in after the heavy equipment had ripped out the trees, tearing the land to shreds in the process. It felt like what ground would have been like after a B-52 strike, an eerie hell scape, but with an explosion of small plants and flowers with new access to the sun, deer and other wildlife roaming free, wondering at the strange human interloper. Sometimes wolves and bears, at which point it felt rather lonely, me with a Swiss Army knife (mostly for the fork) and my nearest crew mate being well outside shouting distance. The churned up land we were planting had been pulp forest itself for over a hundred years. As I planted, others were taking soil and water samples. To the forest company, the forest was a long term asset and that it thrived was in their interest. I didn't think about it much then, but others long dead had planted that ground before me. Those foot long trees I planted have long been harvested and new trees planted in their place. Trees are like wheat, or corn, or quinoa. Except instead of being a once a year crop, trees are once every twenty five years or so. Otherwise, what's the difference?
- snoshy 6y agoThe difference in this particular case is that Ikea is not taking productive forest land and taking it out of production. It is taking naturally forested land that is at risk of deforestation that would ostensibly then be used for a monoculture wood farming industry. If this land was used for timber, it would reduce biodiversity in Georgia. That would unquestionably be a bad outcome for the environment. Deforestation and a reduction in biodiversity is a major problem the world faces, and it impacts much more than just the trees and plants - much of wildlife like animals, insects, and fish are losing their natural habitat and being driven extinct as a result of this practice. You can hype up timber forestry tactics all you want, but what Ikea has done is a good thing for the world, no matter how disingenuous they might be due to their products consuming large amounts of timber for furniture.