Polyester is a durable, wrinkle-resistant and easy-care material that is ideal for many home furnishing products like rugs, pillows, quilts and cushions. The downside to virgin polyester is that it is made from oil, coal or natural gas. This means that when we use virgin polyester, we are exhausting the planet’s natural resources. Our response to this, is to replace all virgin polyester with recycled in our products. In 2020, we achieved the milestone of replacing 79% of the virgin polyester used in IKEA textile products and will accelerate the transformation towards the aim of only using recycled polyester throughout the product range where polyester is used.
Which is why it stands to reason that our clothes storage shouldn't be exactly the same either. It's this idea that led us to develop the PAX/KOMPLEMENT clothes and shoes storage. Designed so that no matter what your passion, fashion or personality, your clothes and accessories will have a practical home.
It just takes a look through a photo album to see that some of the clothes we used to love might make us wonder 'what was I thinking?' today. And as the way we dress has changed over the years, so too has our approach to making storage at IKEA. That's why we've designed PAX/KOMPLEMENT clothes and shoes storage to adapt to how you would like to store your things, rather than trying to fit your clothes and accessories into an unsuitable space. An idea that's shaped its whole development.
“Most people dream of having an organized wardrobe where they can see all their clothes and accessories. But that's where the similarities end", says Betina Tviis Larsson who developed the PAX/KOMPLEMENT system. Traditional storage often shoehorns you into doing things a set way, whether its folding t-shirts or sorting out a sock drawer – something Betina wanted PAX/KOMPLEMENT to step away from. "We didn't want to say there's a right way or wrong way to organize your clothes. If you want to hang your jeans by their belt loops we want you to be able to do it”, Betina says.
To get the design process off on the right foot, the design team focused on what kinds of storage do different people need. "We started by speaking to a lot different people in the team and around IKEA to try and determine different personalities and different needs", Betina explains. And what we ending up with was this a big inventory of preferences and types of things that needed to be stored". By designing around personalities, the team started to develop types of storage that would fit collectors and families just as easily as minimalists and people with very little space. "The whole idea that defined the project became, don't change your personality, change your wardrobe instead", Betina says.
Bringing this research together, the result is a series of interior organizers that can be adapted for particular uses, from multi-purpose drawers and hangers, to specific features for everything from shoes, to pants, to jewelry. The idea is that each organizer can be mixed or repeated as you choose, so if you want to store your whole sneaker collection inside, or have everything hanging, you can. "I really like to use space in a good way", Betina says. "With this system you can tailor your one wardrobe frame into hundreds of combinations." So whether you're a 'super organizer' or a 'piler' type of clothes person we hope you'll be able to match your storage to suit your style.
Originally, all polyester was made from oil-based raw materials which are not renewable but we are switching to only using recycled polyester. The good thing is that polyester can be recycled over and over, without negatively affecting the quality of our products. When we make products from recycled polyester, we give a second life to material that is not biodegradable and reduce the amount that may otherwise end up in landfill or the ocean. Instead, PET and other sources of polyester are used to make textiles, storage boxes, kitchen fronts and even lamps. Recycled polyester is just as good as virgin polyester in terms of looks, quality and function, and produces about 50% less in CO2 emissions. And the material is just as clean and safe in every way.
Recycled polyester makes us less dependent on oil. The amount we convert, is equal to the amount of virgin fossil fuel we eliminate from our polyester raw material (this excludes potential dyeing and other post recycled polyester production treatments). With some exceptions, the challenge is not the conversion of polyester into recycled itself, but to make it available to everyone by keeping it affordable. Buying low environmental impact products often comes with a higher price tag. We want to change that by working to make recycled polyester products more affordable and accessible to the many people.
IKEA is committed to end the dependency on virgin fossil materials and only use renewable or recycled materials by 2030. We are accelerating this movement for polyester in our range and aim to replace all virgin polyester in our textile products with recycled. In 2020, IKEA replaced 79% of the virgin polyester used in IKEA textile products with recycled polyester. In volume, this means we converted 130,000 metric tonnes of recycled polyester, and saved 200,000 tonnes of virign polyester. We haven’t reached our 100% goal yet, but we have come far and overcome many obstacles on the way. These volumes make us a leader in converting to recycled polyester and we hope that our decisions can inspire and motivate whole industries to change.
At IKEA, we demand that all recycled polyester used in IKEA products shall come from recyclers that are compliant with the Global Recycled Standard and traceability is secured to the IKEA product through requirements toward the IKEA Suppliers. By only using recycled polyester that meets the Global Recycled Standards we manage to secure social, environmental and chemical practices at the recycler’s production. We believe that the GRS standard is the best standard on the market today. We work with our partners and textile organisations such as Textile Exchange to further improve standards on recycled materials, including traceability of material beyond the recycling units.