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They haven't solved the "not sourcing wood illegally from Romanian primordial forests" yet though. Baby steps.
by LunaSea 2y ago
They haven't solved the "not sourcing wood illegally from Romanian primordial forests" yet though.
Baby steps.
- wcarron 2y agothere's always something to complain about, isn't there?
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoIf they want to be a pretend charity they have to pretend to act like one.
- blargey 2y agoMerely acknowledging potential benefits from non-race-to-the-bottom salaries is "pretend charity" now?
- wizzwizz4 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:IKEA_ownership_chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:IKEA_ownership_chart
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y agoThey’re only doing what other intelligently managed orgs are: defensive retention via compensation. With the labor force how it is, orgs that prey on precarious workers are in a game of musical chairs. Where do you want to be when the music ends?
- tobinfricke 2y agoApparently they are literally incorporated as a charity.
- Propelloni 2y agoThe owner of IKEA is a dutch foundation. That's not the same as a charity. Still, IKEA's ownership structure is questionable and occasionally flares up as a matter of interest in the media.
- throwaway920102 2y ago[flagged]
- mensetmanusman 2y agoWhat is a primordial forest, and why is its wood so easy to break when in the form of a cabinet?
- Iulioh 2y agoA lot of high end ikea stuff is REALLY good, it's not all honeycomb crap. Honestly it's ikea or luxury stuff, anything else does not make sense. You can't beat ikea quality and quality at any price point.
- eropple 2y agoAs somebody who makes luxury furniture, the rest of my house is IKEA.
- ericd 2y agoYeah, we've been finding the same, a lot of the middle tier stuff might look nice, but it's usually kind of crap, maybe because they just don't have the same scale. Feels like the fast fashion equivalent of furniture, a lot of times. As an alternative, we've found antique shops that have amazing quality furniture for less than ikea's high end lines, if you're ok with the older styles.
- stephenr 2y agoTo be honest they are pretty clear about it in their packaging. If it says solid wood it's probably fine. If it says particle board or fibre board or something other than solid wood it's an "assemble it once and never move it again" piece at best, and a "keep it for a few years" piece at worst. It's not like it's a problem unique to ikea. Buying particle board or mdf furniture is always going to give you a much worse product (in terms of quality and longevity) compared to something made with solid wood, or at the very least with decent quality plywood.
- johnwalkr 2y agoI've found even the cheap stuff to be long-lasting if you disassemble it before moving it. Carrying or pushing shelves in a way that turns them into a parallelogram is what damages them.
- cco 2y agoThey are reportedly working on it https://www.wsj.com/articles/keeping-sanctioned-russian-timber-out-of-the-eu-is-tricky-this-nonprofit-has-a-solution-1bf366b0 https://www.wsj.com/articles/keeping-sanctioned-russian-timb... My impression is that it's really difficult to do at scale because it isn't trivial to tell this tree from that tree, especially post harvest and paperwork is always spoofable.
- petre 2y agoThat's why they source their wood in a country with shitty legislation and corrupt politicians. Because they are "working on it". Their wood supplier is operating on a loss, so no taxes paid to the state.
- Joker_vD 2y agoRussia for the last 8 years have been pushing its woodcutting industry pretty hard at placing a QR code at every single chopped tree and uploading it to the government's centralized DB, analogous to what they do with marking the produced ethanol. Of course, I imagine that at the customs/borders the situation is much more... "solvable", if you know the right people.
- petre 2y agoSure. That's only the legal logging operations. Most of the operators also so illegal logging in parallel. They might ship wood pulp or other wood based products instead of logs. Don't even start about ethanol, because they make samagon (moonshine) out of anything that ferments, including chicken poop. It's just not sold in stores, you "get" it on the black market.
- lifestyleguru 2y ago> it isn't trivial to tell this tree from that tree At such budgets, scale, and lobbying there is no such thing as "ooops, we didn't know where this come from, some lumberjack lied to us". You have folks in suits flying in private jets and arranging agreements (and cocaine and prostitutes as well of course).
- lifestyleguru 2y agoSweden has most forests in Europe, yet its IKEA sources wood from Poland and Romania while selling furniture from cardboard. What happens with all this wood?! Unfortunately in Poland and Romania plastic bag of cash and premium German car go very far while Sweden has more climate activists than trees.
- boxed 2y agoSweden has almost no forests anymore. We have tree plantations. That's a very different thing, and driving around Sweden is absolutely soul crushing for me who grew up running around in the forests during summers.
- lifestyleguru 2y agoThen again, where all this wood go? Because it's not in IKEA's furniture.
- pas 2y agoLot of it is export as roundwood ... but in general, housing (flooring, windows, decking), furniture, firewood/paper (pulp), etc. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-use-of-wood-from-the-Swedish-forest-the-product-fl-ows-volumes-in-million-cubic_fig3_264244647 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-use-of-wood-from-the...
- AdamN 2y agoThis is true in the Pacific Northwest too - very depressing.
- fransje26 2y agoAlthough I agree that this is not a great sight for IKEA, they did not demand that this wood be cut and put on the market for them. They probably sourced it because it was cheap. But the wood had already been cut by that time. Unfortunately, I would see this purely as Romania's unwillingness or inability to address the issues leading to the illegal cutting of wood. Possibly the usual suspects of corruption, a lack of will to act, and a lack of "resources".
- DanielHB 2y agoThis is a really hard problem in supply chains, it is not like buyers wouldn't change supplier if they knew about the abuses it is just that it is VERY expensive and time consuming to have proper traceability of everything in your supply chain. At the end of the day it is one very busy person putting purchase orders to some other very busy people. All of them on tight KPIs for their bonuses until eventually it gets to the production site and oops, child labor. To be honest this problem needs to be fixed top-down through international standards and institutions to ensure proper traceability. Leaving to each company to do it on their own and to country regulations is just stupid and counterproductive.