Christina Niemelä Ström is committed to bring values-based decision making and comprehensive thinking on sustainability into the everyday business. Christina is leading the global sustainability agenda for Supply at IKEA, integrating the strategic sustainability ambitions and commitments into the business operations and decision-making across purchasing, transport, wholesale, manufacturing functions and supply chain.

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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian , and this is a very special edition. We are so lucky to have with us today Christina Niemelä Ström. She’s the Head of Sustainability for Supply for Inter IKEA Group. Welcome, Christina, to the Impact Podcast.

Christina Niemelä Ström: Thank you so much, John, for having me.

John: You know, Christina, before we get talking about all the important work you’re doing with your colleagues in sustainability at the Inter IKEA Group, can you share a little bit about your background? Where did you grow up, and how did you get on this very important journey that you’re on?

Christina: Well, thank you so much for giving that opportunity. So, I grew up on the West Coast in Sweden. I’m from a Finnish origin, so my both parents, they moved to Sweden in the 1960s as immigrant workers, as many Finns did, actually. I grew up on the West Coast, and I went to technical high school, you can say, and a little bit extended version. I went out in my first way of working on the construction sites as a foreman and as a purchaser. I was the only woman within 300 men on those construction fields. Great time and a lot of learning. And I only went into a higher study in the college and university when I was between 26 to 30. And then I started urban planning, and my master was within economics. And that was then what took me actually into IKEA. I joined IKEA as the purchaser out in Malaysia, and I went into purchasing manager role, relocated to Bangkok, and was in charge of the Southeast Asian region. Also spent some time in Singapore and in Japan, everything within the supply and the purchasing field. And after that, had an opportunity to move then with IKEA again to Sweden, to Älmhult, where we have our range and product development headquarters, you can say. I was heading one of our business areas there with developing the range and securing that we meet all the needs and wishes and wants from the customers. For 9 years there in this little village of Älmhult, you should come there one day, John, 8,000 people living. And that is where the magic happens within IKEA. And then I moved to the franchise soon in the Netherlands, working and heading up our department regarding corporate learning and culture. I did that for 5 years to secure that all our 200,000 plus co-workers could actually also have the learning they need. And also transfer the culture that we want to have through the living out the values. And now I’m back then to supply chain where I started my journey. So I started 25 years ago and 5 years ago, I came back here and now heading the sustainability within our supply chain. So it feels like coming back home again.

John: And Christina, right now you’re sitting in Switzerland. You live in Switzerland now and work in Switzerland. Is that correct?

Christina: Yes. Now I live in Switzerland. We have a part of our head office here. But of course, our working field is global. It’s a global assignment. We are buying around in 50 countries and we have our offices in 20 different countries. And this is all to then serve the 63 markets that we have. And actually by today, we have just announced that we have 2 more markets that we’re going to open up in Panama and Costa Rica. Soon IKEA is to be found in 65 markets.

John: You see, Christina, I need more guests like you that are going to break news on this show. I want to be a breaking news show. And I’m so grateful that you broke some news. You know, you’re Finnish and you grew up in Sweden. I’m so embarrassed to say this, I’ve traveled the world most of my life and I haven’t been to that part of the world. Did that help inform you as a young person growing up that Sweden and Finnish folks very much environmentally conscious? Because here in America, this is sort of a new trend over the last 15 to 20 years at most. Whereas in Europe, it seems, and also parts of Asia, which we’ll get into in a little while, its sustainability has been 70, 80 years. It’s generationally already part of their DNA. Explain a little bit about growing up in Sweden and how that helped inform you.

Christina: I think it has something to do with it, for sure. Maybe we didn’t call it sustainability 60, 80 years ago, but it was about to be really careful with resources. I mean, this is a hard, in a way, environment sometimes with the climate and so forth, with the cold winters and so. And especially if I take where IKEA comes from Älmhult, this little village in the southern part of Sweden, where life was hard. People were farmers and to clear their farmland, I need to take away all those stones. Therefore, we have the stone hedge, is one of those symbols of IKEA, was showing the hard work from the people to actually clear the fields to be able to even cultivate anything. So it came from there, I think that you have to work hard to get something and you need to be very careful with the resources. I think that resource kind of scarcity already back then has given us that point. And we came very much from that the vision of IKEA is to create a better everyday life for the many people. And the many people, they have seen wallets. They don’t have a lot of money. We need to do whatever we do, always in a very cost conscious way. And cost consciousness almost always goes together with resource efficiency and sustainability as we know it today. I think that heritage has kind of put us in a quite good position in the start of what we today maybe know as sustainability journey.

John: Personally speaking, you had some great classic education, but you then, because of your job, you got to travel the world and become a global citizen. You lived in so many countries in Asia, Singapore, Japan, and all throughout Asia. How did that help inform your career? Now that you get a chance to look back retrospectively, how did that help you, really help you be better at what you do?

Christina: Yeah, I’ve been living in 8 countries, so that’s quite a few. And then coming from Finland, I never lived in Finland, but that’s also part of my heritage. I think what it does I’m curious by nature, I think maybe we all are who work in developmental businesses, you need to be that. And I think that curiosity, getting to know the people, understand people’s life, have empathy about the situation in different countries and understand the trade-offs that people need to do in everyday life. I think that just really helped me to understand that how life can be. And I think that it’s so important for us, specifically when we go more in senior roles, that we always remember where do we come from? How do people have it? Because maybe today I’m living a little bit more privileged life, but I need to understand the reality of the many people. And also myself coming from humble backgrounds that, okay, this is what I’m here for. We want sustainability to be for the many people, not for the few and rich only, because then it will not make a change in the world. I think having that different perspectives is crucial. Furthermore, talking about innovation and ideas, exchange, it happens between people. It has different flavors in different countries. I think also you see one idea in one country, you can bring it to the other. I think the learning you get the kind of progressive learning in that sense. So it goes faster in the sense. I really enjoyed, and I’m very happy about the opportunity I had to actually be able to travel and live in different worlds to get to know cultures as well.

John: So now you’re the head of sustainability for supply for Inter IKEA Group. Before we go into your title and your role there, explain a little bit about Inter IKEA. Of course, I’ve known the IKEA brand, it’s an iconic and wonderful brand all throughout the world, and of course, here in North America as well. We love your brand. But I never heard of Inter IKEA. Can you explain, before we get into the specifics of your role, what’s Inter IKEA Group mean, as opposed to the IKEA stores that I see when I drive down the street?

Christina: Yeah. Well, as a customer for you, maybe most important for you is IKEA. That is our one brand we have. We all share the same brand. And then we have different responsibilities within different groups within IKEA. Inter IKEA Group, we are the group that is responsible for designing and developing the products that is happening within what we call IKEA range. And that is in Älmhult, in this little city of 8,000 inhabitants. That’s where everything started and our founder was born. And then we have within supply, where I am then responsible for sustainability. That’s where we source the raw material. We produce the products together with our suppliers or within our own factories as well. We transport all the goods all the way to the customer meeting point, to a store, to a fulfillment center or a warehouse. That’s the second company in the group. So design and range, and then we have supply. And the third part is then the retail concept, the franchisor, who franchises out the concept how also should an IKEA store look like we go in this maze we often get talked about. And how does it look? It’s blue and yellow and all the retail systems that we’re doing. That is so that the customer will have an equal experience wherever they are in the world. And then this totality, we as Inter IKEA group, we franchise that out to all the retailers, like it’s a franchise system. So then it is the retailers that will take the concept and meet the customers with it. So all around the world in the soon 65 markets today 63. So that the customer can really get the feeling of IKEA. They have a very important part, of course, to have the connection with the customer, to communicate and bring the engagement up and make the brand more and more known. We have different parts and different roles in the system. Inter IKEA group is the product design, it is the supply, the production and the transportation of it, and it is to provide the entire retail system to our retailers.

John: Understood. And for our listeners and viewers to find Christina and her colleagues and all the great work they do at IKEA, go to www.ikea.com. Now let’s go to your role, Head of Sustainability for Supply. At some companies, sustainability is a very narrow role, at some companies it’s very wide, but yours is also compounded with supply. Can you explain the nexus and the elegance of connecting supply to sustainability and what your role specifically means at IKEA?

Christina: Yeah, I would say that, of course, today sustainability is an inherent part of anything within business development. In a way, it kind of inseminates through the entire system of IKEA. But if we see how we have then divided it, and then it’s important to start with supply. If we, for instance, talk about different footprints, being it the climate footprint, water footprint, waste, a lot of these footprints actually, they take place in the supply chain. Around 70% it would take for the climate footprint, for instance. So we need to be all the way with the material production, the production itself, food ingredients is also part that we need to take care of, the transportation. That is around, if I take climate, 70%. Of course, it’s a lot we all are on to the journey to keep the heating of the planet within the limits. That is very much what we do now. We do that through material transformation, we need to do that within supply chain as well. We do that through transitioning to a circular business that we need to be in a circular society, since we all need to go that way. And we also see that we can then secure that whatever we are, in our case, sourcing and buying is done responsibly. Responsible sourcing is also a very important part of our work. So I will say that is… [crosstalk]

John: Define responsible sourcing, because again, when Jim Gowan, who’s like I shared with you off the air, a longtime friend of mine, and was a chief supply chain officer at Verizon, and then in 2011-ish, they made him also the chief sustainability officer. He explained to me the wisdom behind tying sustainability with sourcing. Can you explain what responsible sourcing means and why that’s so important at any organization?

Christina: Yeah, I would say that it’s very, very important, that goes beyond actually supply. It means that, of course, whatever we buy, that doesn’t make harm to nature or people and all the workers connected to our supply chain, even further down the tiers. So we have to go all the way nowadays to the raw material source in the field, in the forest, in the mine. This is a hard undertaking. We are well on our way when it comes to forest and cotton, for instance, now we’re building it further down for all the other raw materials. To secure that there is no human right breaches, for instance, that there is no environmental risks that we are contributing to, and that we need to secure that we know where all those different impacts happen. And when they’re negative, we need to secure that we cut them down and if it’s positive to scale it. I think many times we talk about responsible sourcing, we always think about the problems and the challenges. And of course, there are many, and that’s also myself in my work, I spend a lot of time with that. But we also find those golden nuggets we can actually harvest and spread the good practices and do more and to come to real impact. And I think, I mean, this pod is called Impact Pod. We can have whatever fancy words about responsible sourcing, but it only matters if actually something happens on the ground. And the ground being, if it’s on the field, a cotton field or in the forest. Of course, in the forest, there’s no deforestation linked to IKEA supply chain, absolutely red flag, cannot do that. Same way as we don’t accept any kind of child labor or forced and bonded labor. Everything about that is a no-go. That’s the responsible sourcing. But then instead to see whatever we are then sourcing, for instance, say wood. We use a lot of wood in IKEA. 60% of our products have wood-based material in it, being it solid wood or wood in a fiber in a board or paper. So of course, wherever we are, and we call those production forests, we need to secure that we have responsible forest management, that we regenerate more forest than what we take out. It can never take up more than the yearly annual growth, for instance. Secure that we are not harvesting in areas where there’s high conservation value of forests. We also spend a lot of time actually mapping those areas together with partners such as WWF, that we’ve been working with for over 20 years. So partners like them help us to really also put what is our standard when it comes to responsible sourcing and now specifically raw material. But if you go into a factory, it’s about health and safety for the worker. It’s about securing that they have the right personal protection equipment, that there is no danger for them, that they have clean drinking water, they have staff quarters that are properly sized, that they get paid on the day they should get paid, that no passports are withheld if they are, for instance, immigrant workers. That’s securing that men and women have equal opportunities. So we see today more and more women coming into the workforce, for instance. So it really goes down to the everyday life of a person linked to IKEA supply chain, being it in the raw material production or harvesting, all the way to the suppliers. And also transporters, like a driver driving a truck in Poland that he or she can actually have the right amount of breaks, etc. So that is responsible sourcing, thinking about that. It’s kind of environmental protection and enhancement, and also then securing that there’s no human rights risk or breaches. So to respect those things all the time.

John: Christina, how daunting of a task is this? I mean IKEA is a very big company, you’re such a big brand around the world, as you said, soon to be in 65 countries. How many suppliers is your team auditing on a regular basis? I mean, is this 50 main suppliers? Is this 500? Can you give a little bit of, again, the number doesn’t have to be exact, but give a general idea of the scope of how much work is ahead for your team on an annual basis?

Christina: Yeah. Of course, when you say my team, it’s not only sustainability professionals doing this work. It’s very important that we have all of our business teams doing the work. So if you see within supply chain, we are around 20,000 people there. 16,000 of them are in our factories. So if we take the 4,000 that are then out in these 20-ish something of our purchasing offices, then having suppliers in around 50 countries. And we have home furnishing suppliers, those who make this glass, for instance, this glass, the table, what we see, this clock on the wall. We have around 800 suppliers. And then we have also suppliers to do all the transportation, the warehousing and services, maybe 300, 400, something like that. Now we’re talking first tier suppliers. Then we have second tier, third tier, which of course goes down. We do ask our suppliers that they take the responsibility further down the supply chain. And for some more what we call critical supply chains, we actually go further down the line. And as I said before already today that the wood purchase and the cotton business, we go all the way down to source already. The team that are then in these 20-ish offices are doing that work. And yes, we need to do help because I can tell you, yeah, we are sourcing responsibly. And you will ask me, “Well, how can you prove that?” Well, then we have to of course have auditing. We do it ourselves. We have third party auditing, announced and unannounced. So we can follow up how are we doing? And I think the most important work is actually done in the development of the suppliers, together with the suppliers, we even call them partners, actually. We see that we’re in partnerships. And I think where I think we might be a little bit lucky, should I say that, or due to how we want to work, we work for a long time with our suppliers. The average relationship is 11 years. And we don’t go buy off the shelf. We develop our products together with them. So they’re so important with all the good ideas they have how to reduce cost of a product, reduce waste, getting more recycled feedstock, shifting. We ask our suppliers to shift to renewable energy. So this is a work we’re on to. And of course I don’t know if you have read up about it, but we have our net 0 goals now for CO2, if I take that, that we need to go down to 50% as many other companies by 2030, and go to be net 0 by 2050. All that work is work that has to happen in a factory.

John: Yeah.

Christina: I think that’s where we in supply and all my fantastic colleagues out there are working on this all the time, to first electrify so you can actually put in renewable energy, put up the solar panels on the roofs, and work with efficiency all the time.

John: I want to go back to that what you just touched upon, collaboration, how it’s a collaboration between your team and the suppliers, and how you design products together. When I got into the industry, and in the technology industry on the circularity part all the big OEMs in technology didn’t have design for sustainability departments. Now, they all have them. And they all live in our factories, working together with their engineers and our team, trying to figure out how to make these products more circular. How does that work? How does that relationship work at IKEA, and is design for sustainability, or some version thereof, a big part of what you do?

Christina: Today is totally integrated. And what we have had for a very long time already is we call it democratic design. What is that? Well, that means that we design any product with 5 different aspects of it. Good form, great function, with good quality, with sustainability, and too low price. So, all these 5 dimensions need to be answered to. And now, we’re adding on to this that we inject also the circular design principles, so that we design a product from the beginning to be reused, repurposed, refurbished, or repaired, and then remanufactured. And only at the last stage is it also possible to recycle it if none of the others have happened. So, we need to do that from the beginning. We have around 10,000 articles in our range, 9,500 to be exact. So, all of them we have mapped and gone through. Where are they? It means they need to be possible to disassemble. Like, when you move from one house to the other, maybe you have your packs, the wardrobe with you, you should be able to collapse it. So, we focus on those kind of innovations to make it possible to do that. Like now, we have this collapsible back. We are very happy about that for both Pax and Billy. Billy you know, the bookshelf. I think most people know Billy. So, that you can actually bring this furniture also around, so they should last for a few moves, because people do move today. So, to integrate these things into from the design, because if you don’t design it from the beginning, it’s very difficult to correct it at the end. In the design already, you need to secure. For instance, today, I’m sitting here with this transparent glass. If we should do this 100% recycled, maybe I need to be fine with a bit of greenish color of it. So, let’s design it with those parts, so that you as a customer and me, we feel, “Okay, I love this glass.” And then we have already done the work behind the scene to make it also more sustainable. So, all that work is going on all the time. And we have to do it along the entire value chain. I think probably here is one of the strengths of IKEA, the system, regardless of which organization you’re part. But to actually decide the design, we know we will produce it together with our very, very good suppliers who are so ingenious, and they have all the good ideas, they know much more than we do, I would say. And of course, then we have sustainability partners who also add up here. We also work with schools and innovators and so forth. And then we have how do we transport things to make everything really, really you know the flat pack, yeah?

John: Right.

Christina: And we constantly work on increasing the filling rate, so we don’t send those things but we do send, for instance, on a ship that is very, very little air we are freighting, or if it goes on a truck. Secure that the trucks are on electricity. Secure that customers can take care of the products, you know. For instance, a sofa. I don’t know about you, but normally, one keeps a sofa quite a long time. You know, I have my EKTORP sofa since 27 years. I brought it to Malaysia, I still have it, and I’ve had 2 kids in between, and they have been smudging all over the sofa. Okay, I can change my loose cover and so forth. And in the future, we’ll also be able to change your maybe the armrest or something that is actually breaks through wear and tear. So that we have those things so I, as a customer, can also do my part. I think to have that possibility to work on the full system, and our retailers are great in working with the service offer together with a franchise where you can say, okay, what kind of services? Peer-to-peer sales or platforms. Do you know, “I want to have a Billy.” “I have a Billy.” “Okay, let’s change.” So all those things we need to do. Work with makers, studios, and buy back Friday that we do sometimes also with our franchises. To have the control of the value chain, I think it’s a responsibility to take. And it’s an opportunity for us to do that.

John: I love that terminology, democratic design. How long has that been around at IKEA? Is that a new term? Or is that something that’s 15 or 20 years old?

Christina: Yeah, that’s not a new term. We have had that for a long time already, when our founder was still around as well. So I don’t know the exact- I don’t remember the exact year, [crosstalk] but 20 plus minimum [crosstalk] [inaudible]

John: Yeah, way before sustainability became a big issue in this world of circularity, it’s part of the DNA of IKEA [inaudible].

Christina: Yeah, It is.

John: I love it. Listeners and viewers, if you’re just joining us, we’ve got Christina Niemelä Ström with us. She’s the head of sustainability for supply for Inter IKEA Group. To find Christina and her colleagues and all the wonderful work they’re doing in sustainability, please go to www.ikea.com. Christina, you’ve been around 25 years, you’re a global citizen, you’ve traveled, you’ve seen a lot. And you obviously are hitting up a very important part of what happens at IKEA. What keeps you up at night? What’s your biggest challenge that you face on a regular basis at IKEA in what you do in supply and sustainability?

Christina: There are many challenges in this world. I would lie if I didn’t say that was the case. And I think that it’s these challenges, these hairy problems we sometimes talk about they’re complex in their nature. And you need to do this kind of trade-off sometimes. But we need to work hard. And I think that was we just talked about the democratic design, it’s helping us to get, we cannot let go. So even if something is difficult, and I would say a very challenging part, it is actually this with the entire traceability and transparency all the way to stores. And it’s not only for IKEA, it’s for the entire world, because sometimes the supply chains are not so transparent. So we need to get all the way there. So that is something we’re working on now. And what we can be happy about then is that we have done it for our main materials. So we know how to do it. And we also see that there’s a possibility to get our suppliers with us. And they also want to do this, because there’s also win-win in terms of maybe get some middlemen and so forth. So you get closer to the raw materials as such. And of course, let’s not be blind here with the CO2 and the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis that the world is in, to stop that in reverse and actually get out on the other side. That is something I’m thinking about every day. We have reduced our climate footprint with minus 28% from our baseline of 2016. And we will now go to minus 50 for 2030. If we say the 22% remaining, they’re going to be tough. The 28% was kind of the easy gains and now we go. But what is so good is that I’ve seen things that I didn’t think was possible to do, has happened. Because when the world puts its best brains, and now we have AI to help to work on these very complex problems, we see actually that some things can go much faster than what we thought. So I’m sitting today thinking what I think maybe is a huge challenge. We will actually crack faster. And some of the things I might think is more easy might be the more difficult ones.

John: I want to go back to you. Like you broke news at the top of this broadcast and said that you’re going to be in 65 countries soon, you’re in 63 now. How hard is that? How hard is that, Christina? The fact that you lived in 8 countries, you’ve traveled to so many more, you’re really a global citizen in terms of where you live today, where you grew up, where you’ve lived during your career and your life. So how difficult is it managing a multicultural, multinational corporation on terms of sustainability and supply chain, given that you work all around the world, and that the rules and the laws of sustainability and regulations are not harmonized. In fact, they’re far from harmonized. It’s a patchwork [?] quilt. Is that part of the hurdles that you face on a daily basis?

Christina: Actually, I think that this is maybe one part where we might have a bit of a good position in IKEA, because it comes from, why are we doing this sustainability work? We are not doing it because legislators are asking us to do it. We are actually happy that we see strengthening legislation reasons now in Europe, because that is helping us to have a level playing
field that others also need to do the work. I think that with the vision that we have to create a better everyday life for the many people, with our culture that is brought out from how we live out our values. And if I quickly just take what is our values and our culture, it’s actually that we work together, that we lead by example, we find better ways and we make things done. That is kind of the essence of the IKEA culture. When we do that, sustainability has such a clear space to take and to claim there. I’m not saying that it’s easy and that everything that I wish to do as a sustainability professional comes true, but it is there. The reasoning is not very difficult. We talked about our partners in supply chain, they have been with us for a minimum of 11 years. Some have been with us since we started 82 years ago, some 50 years. So they know what we want and we are together in this relationship because we respect each other and we actually have the same North Star where we want to go. I’m thinking that that North Star, the vision, culture and values is actually helping us and that we believe that to be a good business is good business. I can see today clearly when we look at brand, different research and so forth that we do, that these efforts also started to be seen and noticed by customers. They see that we are trying, I’m not saying that we are perfect in any way because nobody is. And I think that’s also part, we always want to do a little bit better. Our founder always says, “A little bit better, a little bit better” all the time. He was never happy. There’s always something better you can do tomorrow. [crosstalk] So we never sit on our hands and say, “Now we’re done” because you’re never done. You need to be in this day out, day in, month after month, year after year. And I think that is something also talked about this coming from Sweden. I think it has something to do with it. Things have not been easy. We’re a small country. For us to also attract talent, we need to be a place where people want to work. So I think we see even people coming from US and so forth, they even seek themselves. They want to go to Sweden and they want to work in IKEA. I had a few recruitments like that. And I think there is a voice maybe that we can help to make that clear and a little bit loud. I think we can be better in communicating everything that we do. But to say that this is good business. You have to make it a business. If it’s not, if it’s just a cost center, this will never work. You need to make it also possible to scale and want people to drive on it. And if I talked about all these colleagues that I have, 20,000 in supply chain, if I just narrow it to my responsibility, they have so many KPI, so many goals they need to do. So what I and my colleagues within sustainability, we need to understand what it is that they do every day and how can I inject sustainability into processes, ways of working that they anyway do so it’s possible for them to actually do it.

John: When you were a little kid growing up, it seems though you broke through what is typically a male industry. As a young woman, did you ever believe or think that you were going to travel the world and live in all those different countries you’ve lived while you built your career? It seems like you had a lot of courage and bravery just to go live in strange lands. From Sweden to Asia is quite a jump. And how does that inform you today? Because obviously you have tremendous social fluency and cultural fluency. Even though you run now and you’re a leader in charge of a lot to do, do you still get out and go exercise that side of you and you go visit vendors around the world on an annual basis yourself?

Christina: Yeah. Your first question, if I saw myself like this when I was a kid? No, I didn’t. But I also was never afraid to go. Since my parents also immigrated, my mom was 16, my father was 18, they left their country. And we also lived in different cities in Sweden. So to break up and go somewhere was something that I knew. So I went also to Spain before I actually started to work with IKEA. So I lived there for a year. And then when I went to Malaysia as a single woman, I went there. [crosstalk] [inaudible]

John: A young woman?

Christina: A young woman. And I did this thing. And I thought it was just, “Of course, this is something if I have the opportunity, I need to take care and do it.” And I never regretted that a single day. It was tough at times. There were many tears, also some nights feeling lonely. It was tough, difficult.

John: There was no talking on an iPhone to your parents or anyone you knew.

Christina: There was no talking on the iPhone. And you know, I also say, the work we do, it is tough. And sometimes I say, “If you want an easy job, this is not a job for you.” But if you want to have an interesting job, and you’re willing to do like this, take up your sleeves and work, then there’s a lot to offer. And I wish for more young people to have the opportunity and take the opportunity if it comes. And it’s always this, but if it doesn’t work, then move back home.

John: That’s right.

Christina: You know, and if things are bad, I really like this Rumi saying, “This too shall pass whenever it’s tough, tough, tough, it will not always be that tough. And when things are good, it will not always be that good. So also enjoy.” So I think that people really… If you want to, and if you have the opportunity and you like it, then just just go ahead, because the learning and the payback is great.

John: How about today, though, do you get out still and go exercise that part of you by going out and meeting vendors and suppliers around the world. So you stay fresh on top of your game by actually doing it yourself.

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is really important. Just before I went on my summer vacation, I went to Romania to visit, for instance, one of the ceramic factories who have done this great thing to use a lot of the internal waste back into the ceramic, which was seemed impossible a few years ago. So I went into the forest to visit where actually our wood raw material comes from. I think that is something also most of the leaders, well, all of us actually, what we have to do every year is to do what we call anti-bureaucratic week. So we need to go into a store or a warehouse or something to work for a few days to know the reality. Because we always say, and I really see that, “These are the heroes of every day. It’s not me or the people sitting in an office. It’s actually the people who’s doing the work.” So for us also as leaders, senior leaders, we need to do that. And I think for me, the best days of my work is when I get to get out to suppliers, to partners. Also, of course, we visit a lot of the different conferences, the COPS or whatever it might be, which is also very important to understand what others are doing. What can we collaborate with? Where can we find new partners? Also very important, we cannot be an isolated island as IKEA, because the challenges the world is facing are huge. They are systemic in their character, so no one can solve them alone. We need to work together. So I think also that kind of exchange with others is very important, but it is always important to know your own business and what can you do and where do we have challenges. We need to understand so we don’t put unreasonable expectations on people when it’s not possible.

John: Christina do you create an annual report every year on the sustainability supply chain efforts and is it published on the IKEA website or where is it…?

Christina: Yeah, it’s on ikea.com. So we do a sustainability report annually. And of course, now with the CSRD coming here then in Europe, we will now transform into that. So we will have our first CSRD report out in November 2026 as well. So we do both sustainability report previously and climate report, and now we’re transiting into CSRD. And let’s see if we also need to have some additional other storytelling about the good things that we do and so forth.

John: Talk a little bit, what haven’t I asked you about that you’d like to share about the important work you do at IKEA? Because obviously you do so much there and there’s so many things we could go into.

Christina: I think it’s very important for you as a customer, if I take this glass that I still have here. For you maybe it’s just a glass for you. You just want to drink water.

John: Yes. Right.

Christina: You want to drink water, you see a glass. What I see here, I see hours and hours of work. I see innovation. I see people going down to secure. Where does this sand come from that goes into this glass? How does the working condition? It’s hot when you go into a glass factory. I see that our co-workers and colleagues are trying to go, for instance, for electric furnaces, for instance. I see how they try to pack this in a way so we can ship them better without them breaking, of course, and taking less space. And I see that the workers who’ve been doing this along the entire supply chain, they get paid what they should be at the right time and so forth and nobody’s harmed. And you as a customer, if you just feel, “I can trust IKEA” and I say, “This is the work we do, it’s my work to do this all the time. You don’t need to worry. But if you want to and you want to know more, you should also be able to follow this journey.” And this, I think, is something that we are working on to get better on getting out with these stories and the communication of what we actually do. I think it’s a little bit too well-kept secret. So we’re trying to find ways that make sense for people to actually tap onto these stories. Or else just buy this glass, drink your water and feel, “Okay, I bought it at IKEA. It was a good price. It’s a nice design. I like it. And they seem to have done the work behind the scenes.”

John: But since that’s the lens you see things through. So you see approximately 9500 products that way and you’re seeing what goes into it. Like you said, better storytelling to the to the to the public at large and your clients at large that will pay dividends down the road because there’s a whole new generation. You have children, I have children, that are our children’s generation. Now, of course, you’re European, so you have a jump on us. But here in America, we never grew up with any sustainability. I’m 63 years old. We didn’t grow up. That wasn’t part of our world. But for our children, though, they’re voting with their pocketbooks. They want to they want to support great brands like IKEA that really care about what they’re doing and the products that they’re putting out there. So getting better at that storytelling makes total sense because that will connect the new generation with all your 9500 plus products and make them feel like, “We want to support all the efforts, Christina and her team and her colleagues are putting into these products.” Makes sense.

Christina: Yeah, I think, I think it makes sense. And that’s of course also brand building and brand protection, actually. But even without just communicating, we need to do it because that’s who we are. That’s what we want to do. But it’s also not you want to feel as a customer that you also are part of something bigger than just buying a glass.

John: That’s right.

Christina: So I’m thinking that this is something we are really focusing on for the future.

John: That goes back to the legislation issue. You’ve been doing this as part of your DNA as the company, as part of his DNA way before this legislation. It’s nice that the legislation is catching up with you because it’s now bringing everybody else along. But this was part of your DNA to start with. That’s great.

Christina: Yeah, I think so. That’s a good asset that we have there that we need to work every day. This doesn’t come for free. I’m not want to say that this is easy. It’s not easy.

John: No, no.

Christina: It’s a lot of work, but we are up for it. And we want to get better, a little bit better all the time. And then at certain times we get to a leap and they can you really get the payoff for for your investments in time and money.

John: 9500 plus products. What’s your three favorite IKEA products yourself?

Christina: Oh, this is so difficult. You know, and if I have IKEA people that listen to me, they say, “Why didn’t you say this or that?” But I used to be, before than the business area manager for what was home organization. And I must say all of us, we have a lot of things at home and we need to also, of course, try to to to get rid of the clutter and also not spend too much. But I really love our SAMLA box. SAMLA is this plastic created with a lid where you can see the goods through. That is also now, by the way, going recycle materials. And that’s a great one

John: I love that.

Christina: I also love the FRAKTA bag, you know, the blue bag that you have in IKEA. What do you use your FRAKTA bag for? It can be for laundry, it can be for hay, if you are a horse girl or horse man. I love that product. And I will say, what more do I love? What do I use all the time? Maybe my little shopping bag that I bring with me all the time to to do my shopping so I have that. But there are so many things. And also my EKTORP sofa that I had they weren’t so much for my kids. But now that has a nice new dress that I can redress her in.

John: Talk about your kids for a second. Are they because of you…? And I love how you tied back your curious and your bravery to immigration, because I believe that even here in America, it’s an immigration nation. And when you look at some of the greatest brands that were ever built in the United States, they were built by immigrants. And so I think immigrants make some of the best entrepreneurs. So I totally agree with your bravery coming from your parents DNA to come and uplift their lives and move from Finland to Sweden. You’ve seen it. That was part of your DNA. Talk a little bit about passing on your DNA to your children. Are they like mom? And do they very easily travel the world and are very excited about going and seeing new countries and new cities?

Christina: Yeah, my son is 19, so he’s just now leaving to go to university. So he’s going from Switzerland now he will go actually back to the Netherlands where he was there before. So he will study there. So I think that they definitely see themselves as as world citizens. Sometimes maybe for the for the mom heart, I would maybe wish them to be. I think probably we will go back to Sweden one day. So I want them to have them close. But I know it’s very selfish for me. So I should just let them live their life. They might think that I talk too much about development, sustainability and so forth. They’re almost a little bit fed up. But I think that at certain points it goes in. I can see it in their behavior. So I’m happy that they seem to behave in the way that I think that is good in terms of not being wasteful, et cetera.

John: You’ve traveled the world and you’ve lived around the world. If I could say you could go anywhere in the world and you had a couple of weeks off from IKEA and on a break and money didn’t matter, where would you go that you haven’t been? Where do you want to go that you haven’t been before?

Christina: I would like to go to South Africa. And I’m very clear. And I would like to follow in the in the in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela, who is really my…

John: Hero.

Christina: …yeah, he’s he’s somebody that I look up to that what he did and what he endured was fantastic.

John: Speaking of Nelson Mandela, how do you find your inspiration nowadays? Because I get to interview so many wonderful people like you that not only have important roles at iconic brands, but they really make an impact on this planet. When big companies like IKEA do the work that you and your colleagues do, it’s a huge impact. And it’s not only inspirational for everybody else, but it makes a big impact. Where today do you get your inspiration from in terms of what I call the greatest fraternity on the planet, chief sustainability officers, chief impact officers. But way beyond that, do you look inside of our industry and do you look at other retailers or do you look outside of the retail industry for other forms of inspiration as well?

Christina: Yeah, I think maybe my answer is a bit boring here, but maybe here become a little bit practical. I think actually I get most of my inspiration when I see my colleagues actually doing great work and the partners that we’re working with and to see things that things doesn’t stop to become a word or something we write in a strategy or in a paper, it actually happens. And when people take bold steps, even sometimes without us in IKEA asking for if this is a supplier, if it is a co-worker that I have this great idea and they do it. I think that that gives me the biggest satisfaction. Then also, since we talked about Nelson Mandela, I think that for me, reading is an important part and actually inspiration can come from different places. It can also come from art and music, whatever it might be. But I think also to listen into a bit broader so that you get some inspiration from other industries and so forth. And I think also like social entrepreneurs are like, they are the kings and the queens who work for their society, for their community, and they move topics that seemed impossible and how they actually manage this, what we call the multi-stakeholder approach. I think we have a lot to learn from them. And how can we as big corporations do it in the same way as they do?

John: I love it. I know this is going to be hard. It’s like a Sophie’s choice. If you were to give one example of something that you’re super proud of you and your colleagues have done in sustainability and supply at IKEA, what would be your favorite example today? And of course, this could change tomorrow and it’s going to change a month or two from now. But what’s your favorite example you’d like to share with our audience on one of your big successes with your colleagues in sustainability and supply?

Christina: Oh my God, you really make it difficult. I can talk about the material transformation. That is great. More and more recycled feedstock. And I can talk about responsible sourcing [inaudible] that is our code of conduct. It’s been out there for 25 years. We were working with it since then. So it was just introduced the same month as [inaudible]. Or I can talk about maybe wood. I think that actually the responsible forest management that we have been part of in IKEA, we try to make it the norm, not only for our own use of wood, but also for others to secure that we know where the wood comes from, that we protect the forest that needs to be there. Of course, zero deforestation, but really work with responsible sourcing forest management there. I think it’s a big undertaking. And when we started 2009, I think we said, “We have to move this way.” And FSC is one of the means we use as a third party certification, which we think is one of the best today. But it doesn’t only stop there. We have our own foresters out there also looking at the forest to secure that it’s well managed and so forth. And to take that learning now, and then we did it for cotton and now we do it for the other ones. So I think that that was something we never thought it was possible to do, but we did it. And we did it much before our own deadline. So sometimes we put goals, like 100% goals, “Let’s do that 100%.” People say, “But how are we going to do it?” “Well, we don’t know yet, but we will figure it out.”

John: Figure it out.

Christina: Because there is the little word, 3 letter word of “yet”. I think that has so much power. “We don’t know that yet. We haven’t done that yet, but we will do it as soon as [inaudible].” So I think that, yeah, [crosstalk] it was difficult to say one thing so I said a few. I broke the rules.

John: [Inaudible] you opened all the possibilities. Earlier in the show, you brought up responsible sourcing and you defined it. I don’t want to leave our audience without you sharing a little bit about responsible diversion. Does that fall under your hat or is that a different division of the company? But again, talk about the importance of not only… Obviously you already did a great job talking about responsible sourcing. Let’s talk about the bookend of that responsible diversion.

Christina: Can you help me to understand what that means, responsible diversion? I don’t… [inaudible] [crosstalk]

John In terms of waste, like when the waste goes out of the factories and everything, how do you help ensure or nudge or educate folks to be more circular so the waste doesn’t go [crosstalk] [inaudible] that it goes back into the circular economy somehow, some way?

Christina: Yeah, yeah. And that is, of course, linked to what I call this circular design principles. It is to design the product so it’s possible to reuse or pass on, also for customers to repurpose, to repair, to remanufacture, refurbish and only at a later stage recycle. We also say for us that we should have zero landfill from our own operations. We shouldn’t have any landfill going out there. So we need to work, today landfill makes up out of 80% of the food, if I take the CO2 footprint, for instance. So to get down on that and how do we do that? Is to get it back into the supply chain. It doesn’t have to be a clear supply chain. Here we need to work systemically in society. [crosstalk] So where we can and we have an opportunity to do demand a supply of waste material into our own production, fine. But otherwise go back into infrastructure of recycling, for instance. So we also work a lot with trying to influence how do we define waste? Because sometimes legislation is actually stopping and that we can never let it be the case. So we try to also advocate for what is actually good for the circular society as well. And then that will come into transition, IKEA to also be fully circular. This is a huge work for us all to do. But we see, like what I said, this ceramic factory I was just before my vacation.

John: Yeah, Romania.

Christina: To see that how they managed to actually work with, yes, this first internal waste material only, but they also took already a fire, so to say, a ready plate that also went back into the production. And when we know that we can do that in a technical way, we know that we can also start to work on, could we actually maybe see if we can work with waste collectors to get such kind of material back to our products. Today, that kind of waste stream doesn’t exist. But if we try it first, it’s possible to do. Then we can also start to work on those kind of setups that we need to work with the different actors on the market.

John: I want to go back to something you just said. So the goal overall is zero waste at IKEA. The goal, and that’s what everyone works towards.

Christina: It’s very important that we look at all parts in the value chain with the waste, because the waste has to get reduced. At the same time, the waste material or all the material we have out there, that is the material of tomorrow. So that recycled material will be the feedstock of tomorrow. And of course, renewable. So all the products that we have out there today that we use is also the material for the future products that we will need in the future. So it kind of comes around. So the circle is closed.

John: Christina, I know it’s a little later in the evening in Switzerland right now. I want to first of all, thank you for the generosity of your time today and your wisdom and the fact that you stayed later right after your vacation to have this conversation in Switzerland. Thank you so much. It’s been really wonderful. You’re unbelievably inspirational and obviously brilliant. She’s Christina Niemelä Ström. She’s the head of sustainability for supply for Inter IKEA Group. To find Christina and all the important work her and her colleagues are doing in sustainability and supply, please go to www.ikea.com. You’re always welcome back on the show. I want to say thank you for not only your time today, but thank you for making the world a better place.

Christina: Thank you so much, John.

John: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform, revolutionizing the talent booking industry with thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.

While materials stand for almost half of its climate footprint, IKEA has embarked on what it refers to as a material transformation. It means that IKEA is developing products with a lower footprint and increasing recycled material and renewable material in products and packaging.