Ikea is opening its first second-hand store in a mall that only sells recycled or reused products

• This fall, furniture giant Ikea is opening its first store that will only sell refurbished furniture or products made from recycled or renewable materials, according to a recent press release.
• The new store will be located in the ReTuna shopping mall in Sweden.
• Ikea also recently announced it’s committing an additional $707 million (600 million euros) to become carbon positive by 2030.
• Carbon positive means a company removes more greenhouse gases than it produces.

This fall, Ikea is opening its first store that will only sell refurbished furniture and sustainably produced products. The second-hand store will open in the city or Eskilstuna, Sweden, specifically in the ReTuna shopping mall, the world's first "recycles mall," where everything sold there is refurbished or recycled.

"The climate crisis cannot be solved in theory, it has to be solved in practice," Jonas Carlehed, sustainability manager of Ikea Sweden, said in a press release.

The new store is part of the furniture giant's plans to reduce its "overall climate impact by 70% per product" by 2030. The company also announced that it would only make products that are made of renewable or recycled materials by 2030, per the press release.

In 2017, the US's Environmental Protection Agency reported that furniture accounted for 9.8 million tons of household waste.

"At Ikea we don't want to merely be a part of the sustainability movement — we want to lead it," Carlehed added.

The move comes around the same time executives of Ikea's parent company, Ingka holdings, announced they would invest approximately $707 million (600 million euros) in initiatives to boost renewable energy and sustainable production practices to meet the company's ambitious goal to be carbon positive by 2030.

Carbon positive means a company goes beyond being carbon neutral (achieving net zero carbon emissions) to actually remove additional greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Ikea says it has exceeded its 2020 goal to generate more renewable energy than it consumes across its operations in 30 countries.