The IKEA catalogue was once the most printed book in the world, 217 million copies a year. I led IKEA's supply-chain sustainability program for seven years, and the catalogue was where it began.
We built big-data dashboards that made the whole paper chain visible, from pulp to print to transport. Suppliers had to report their energy, water, waste, and emissions before they could bid, so purchasing started to favour the cleaner mills. In the first year, energy use across the chain fell 8% and CO2 dropped 2%, the equivalent of leaving 285,000 barrels of oil in the ground. The tooling cost under half a million dollars and returned more than 200 to 1 on the energy savings alone. IKEA reached 100% FSC-certified paper a year ahead of its own target.
484 GWh saved over seven years. Enough to light 145,000 Swedish homes for a year.