1% of World's Commercial Wood Goes to ... IKEA

The total comes to 17.8 million cubic yards of wood
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 13, 2014 4:02 PM CDT
1% of World's Commercial Wood Goes to ... IKEA
An IKEA store is shown.   (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

IKEA, the Swedish furniture chain so massive it employs 150,000 people in hundreds of stores in almost 30 countries, now eats up an incredible 1% of the world's entire commercial wood supply, reports Pacific Standard. That was 17.8 million cubic yards in 2012—an amount so unfathomable that for more than 20 years IKEA, which was incorporated in 1943, has managed it all through its own wood sourcing and production company, Swedwood, reports Gizmodo.

IKEA does appear to be trying to harvest some of that wood sustainably, with 23% of it certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, meaning it is both sustainably and legally sourced, IKEA reports. Still, there is no sidestepping the company's impact worldwide. With 212 million copies printed every year, its catalog is more than twice as widely distributed as the Bible, and the company distributed a whopping 2.5 billion little wooden dowels in 2011, according to the Telegraph, which adds that an estimated one in five babies in the UK was conceived in an IKEA bed. (Speaking of baby-making, check out how IKEA recently celebrated Valentine's Day.)

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