Ikea: Cheap chairs aren't worth the destruction of our natural forests.
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Have you heard about Ikea's latest scandal?
A new investigation shows the Swedish furniture giant's relentless demand for cheap wood is destroying the habitat of lynx and brown bears. Some of Ikea's best-tselling chairs have been raced to illegal logging in Ukraine's ancient Carpathian forest, one of the last sanctuaries for these and other endangered species.
Ikea responded by promising to investigate the timber companies responsible. But you and I both know that's not enough.
The problem isn't with a single supplier -- it's with Ikea's never-ending pursuit of fast furniture at the expense of our planet and climate. Until it radically overhauls its wood sourcing policy, forests in Ukraine and beyond will never be truly safe.
Ikea is the biggest wood consumer in the world, tearing through our forests at the rate of one tree per second -- and growing. Its impact on the planet is so huge, it can even be seen from space.
Yet it exerts little oversight over its timber empire, which stretches far beyond Sweden to Russia and eastern Europe. Instead, it relies on certifiers from the international Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) to slap a "sustainable" label on the wood it uses.
It's not sustainable -- it's rampant corporate greed. In the short term, Ikea must conduct a 100 percent independent investigation of all of its timber suppliers in high-risk countries such as Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, and demand reform of the FSC to ensure its certified wood is truly sustainable. In the long term, it must set ambitious targets for phasing out wood from natural forests -- and eventually, for eliminating the use of virgin wood altogether.
We know we can count on SumOfUs members like you to defend our forests from profit-hungry corporations. Just recently, after months of ongoing pressure, you forced Pepsi to overhaul its palm oil sourcing policy and prevent rainforests from being destroyed for Doritos and other snacks. Hundreds of thousands of you helped start a shareholder revolution at Yum! Brands -- owner of Pizza Hut and KFC -- when its bosses failed to take deforestation seriously.
Now you and I have the opportunity to tackle the destruction happening in our own backyard. With your help, Ikea will finally see the forest for the trees -- and put animals, people and our planet over its furniture profits.
