IKEA are estimated to produce around 9,000,000 metric tonnes (20 billion pounds) of waste in total in 2026. The figure covers everything that eventually becomes waste; packaging, the furniture itself, and the wood scraps left from making it.
As the world's largest furniture retailer, IKEA sell around €45 billion of products a year and consume close to 1% of all the commercial wood cut on the planet — almost all of which eventually becomes waste.
IKEA have pledged to halve the climate impact of their value chain by 2030 and to use only recycled or renewable materials. But the raw volume they put into the world keeps growing — which is why the waste total is still rising, not falling.
By 2026, that adds up to an estimated 9,000,000 metric tonnes, placing IKEA among the largest waste footprints of any furniture company in the world.
IKEA's operational waste (2016–2026)
IKEA track their operational waste, which spans stores, warehouses, offices and delivery operations. Their total waste — including products and supply chains — is far bigger, but there's no official overview of those numbers.
The table below shows their operational waste from 2016 to 2026, alongside the share that gets recycled rather than sent to disposal:
| Year | Operational waste (tonnes) | Recycling rate |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 560,000 | 79.5% |
| 2025 | 531,852 | 79.0% |
| 2024 | 497,362 | 77.7% |
| 2023 | 476,507 | 76.9% |
| 2022 | 480,000 | 75.7% |
| 2021 | 490,000 | 75.5% |
| 2020 | 465,000 | 75.0% |
| 2019 | 520,000 | 74.5% |
| 2018 | 530,000 | 74.0% |
| 2017 | 525,000 | 73.5% |
| 2016 (baseline) | 519,408 | 73.0% |
Note: Ingka Group operations only (87.4% of IKEA retail sales), by financial year (Sept–Aug), so true IKEA-wide waste is higher. 2016, 2023, 2024 and 2025 are reported; 2017–2022 and 2026 are estimates normalised to current methodology. Recycling rate rose from 73% (2016) to 79% (2025), against a 100% target for 2030.
What are IKEA?
IKEA are the world's largest furniture retailer, known for affordable flat-pack furniture sold through large out-of-town stores.
Founded by Swedish Ingvar Kamprad in 1943, IKEA today have around 500 stores across 60-plus countries and roughly 915 million store visits a year.
What most people think of as "IKEA" is actually two companies. Inter IKEA Group owns the brand and designs the products; Ingka Group is the largest retailer, running the majority of IKEA stores under franchise.
Most of the public sustainability and waste data comes from these two reporting separately — which is part of why a single, IKEA-wide figure is hard to pin down.
IKEA's total carbon footprint (2016–2026)
IKEA measure their climate footprint across the entire value chain — not just their own operations, but everything from raw materials to the energy customers use running IKEA products at home.
The table below tracks that footprint from 2016 to 2026, and the progress against their pledge to halve it by 2030:
| Year | Climate footprint (Mt CO₂e) | Reduction from baseline |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 20.0 | −33% |
| 2025 | 20.5 | −31% |
| 2024 | 21.3 | −28% |
| 2023 | 24.1 | −19% |
| 2022 | 27.4 | −8% |
| 2021 | 26.2 | −12% |
| 2020 | 27.0 | −9% |
| 2019 | 29.7 | 0% |
| 2018 | 31.0 | +4% |
| 2017 | 30.4 | +2% |
| 2016 | 29.7 | baseline |
Note: Figures cover IKEA's whole value chain (Inter IKEA Group), by financial year (Sept–Aug). 2016, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2024 are reported; other years are estimated or interpolated. 2025 and 2026 are projections.
IKEA's packaging footprint
For a business built on flat-packs, packaging is the number that matters most. IKEA use around 920,000 tonnes of it a year — roughly 4 billion individual packages — and spends over €1 billion doing so. Almost all of it ends up as someone else's waste to sort.
| Material | Approx. volume/yr (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Total packaging material | 920,000 | 100% |
| Paper & cardboard (fibre-based) | 837,000 | 91% |
| Plastic | 83,000 | 9% |
IKEA's packaging story is genuinely strong: fibre-first by design, flat-packed for density, styrofoam-free, and shifting the last 9% of plastic out by 2028. But "recyclable" is not "recycled" — once it leaves the store, whether 920,000 tonnes of board and film actually gets recycled depends on the collection system in each country, not on IKEA.
How much wood does IKEA use?
Wood is the heart of IKEA and a large part of their footprint. Almost 60% of IKEA products are wood-based, and at their scale that makes IKEA the largest wood consumer on the planet, using close to 1% of all the commercial wood cut worldwide.
| Year | Roundwood for products (million m³) | Recycled wood share |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 14.5 | 20% |
| 2025 | 14.7 | 19% |
| 2024 | 15.0 | 16% |
| 2023 | 15.5 | 14% |
| 2022 | 16.0 | 13% |
| 2021 | 16.5 | 11% |
| 2020 | 16.5 | 10% |
Note: Roundwood equivalent processed for IKEA products, on Inter IKEA's current methodology, by financial year (Sept–Aug). The 2025 figures and 2024 recycled share (16%) are reported; the rest are estimates. Critics such as Earthsight put IKEA's draw closer to 20–21 million m³ a year, though on a wider, non-comparable basis. About 96.5% of IKEA wood was FSC-certified or recycled in 2025.
IKEA say 96.5% of their wood is FSC-certified or recycled, and have pushed hard on doing "more from less" — redesigning sofa frames to cut wood use by roughly a fifth, for example.
Food waste - the price of a billion meatballs
IKEA aren't just a furniture company — they're also one of the world's largest restaurant operators, serving Swedish meatballs, hot dogs, cinnamon buns and soft-serve ice cream to hundreds of millions of people a year.
That scale came with a serious food-waste problem: around 150 kg thrown away per store, every day.
Since 2017, IKEA have cut that sharply, using Winnow's AI scales to match cooking to actual demand. They became the first major retailer to halve their food waste, and have kept reducing it since.
How much food does IKEA throw away?
Below is a table of estimated figures tracking IKEA's restaurant food waste from 2017 to 2026, based on the percentage cuts IKEA have reported:
| Year | Restaurant food waste (tonnes/yr) | Reduction from baseline |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 17,000 | −60% |
| 2025 | 17,000 | −60% |
| 2024 | 18,000 | −58% |
| 2023 | 19,000 | −56% |
| 2022 | 20,000 | −54% |
| 2021 | 21,000 | −51% |
| 2020 | 22,000 | −48% |
| 2019 | 27,000 | −38% |
| 2018 | 35,000 | −18% |
| 2017 | 43,000 | baseline |
Note: IKEA's last absolute figure is the 43,000 t 2017 baseline; since then they report percentage cuts, not tonnages (about 60% by 2025). All tonnages here are estimates applying those reported cuts to the 2017 baseline.
IKEA's climate and waste goals
IKEA have made a long list of green promises, covering their whole business — from the wood they buy to what happens to a product once it's thrown away.
Their headline commitments cover emissions, waste, materials and packaging:
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Cut their value-chain greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 (against 2016), and reach net zero by 2050.
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Recycle 100% of their operational waste by 2030 — they're at 79% today.
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Use only renewable or recycled materials in their products and packaging.
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Remove plastic from consumer packaging by 2028, and make all packaging fibre-based or recyclable.
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Keep cutting restaurant food waste, having already more than halved it.
Note: Figures are from Ingka Group's FY25 Annual Summary & Sustainability Report and IKEA's published climate targets.
What IKEA actually do about it
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They've poured about €4.3 billion into their own wind farms and solar parks
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Almost all the electricity they use is now renewable — around 95%, up from 70% in 2016
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Roughly 6 in 10 home deliveries already arrive by electric van, on the way to 9 in 10 by 2028
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More of their furniture is built from recycled wood, steel and plastic
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Smart scales in their kitchens help cooks make just what's needed, so less food gets thrown out
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They buy back old furniture and resell it instead of letting it go to waste
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Even the flat-pack earns its keep — flatter boxes mean more furniture per truck and fewer trips on the road
Frequently asked questions about IKEA's waste
Below, we've answered the most common questions about IKEA's waste production.
How much waste does IKEA produce each year?
An estimated 9,000,000 tonnes in 2026, as a total footprint. That combines the waste from their own operations (560,000 t), the packaging they put on the market (920,000 t), and the much larger mass of products that eventually become waste (7.5 million t).
Does IKEA send much waste to landfill?
Of the waste they handle directly, most is recycled (79%) or recovered (14%). Around 6.9% — about 37,000 tonnes — goes to disposal, which covers landfill and incineration without energy recovery. The split varies widely by country.
How big is IKEA's carbon footprint?
About 21.3 million tonnes CO₂e across their whole value chain in 2024, down 28% from their 2016 baseline. Most of it sits in materials and in customers' use of products at home — not in the stores and warehouses they run directly. Their 2025 figure has not yet been published.
How much food does IKEA waste?
Their restaurants have cut food waste by about 60% per meal since 2017 — from a baseline of roughly 43,000 tonnes a year — saving an estimated 47.5 million meals. They were among the first major companies to halve their food waste.
Is IKEA packaging plastic-free?
Nearly. About 91% of their packaging is paper or cardboard, and they aim to remove plastic from consumer packaging by 2028. Styrofoam was eliminated in 2022.
Why is IKEA's waste rising if they're becoming greener?
Growth. They are cutting the carbon and plastic intensity of each product, but selling more of them — so the raw volume of material, and the waste it eventually becomes, keeps climbing. Operational waste alone rose 6.9% in the latest year.
What happens to old IKEA furniture?
Once sold, it's the customer's to dispose of. IKEA run a Buyback & Resell service — they bought back around 686,500 used products in 2025 — and have launched a peer-to-peer second-hand marketplace in several countries, but these recover only a small fraction of what they sell.
