Flooring Focus: Project: IKEA Jönköping, Sweden
Toby Maxwell survey projects that set new and exciting standards for flooring
FLOORING manufacturer Tarkett has recovered 10,000 sq m of old flooring from IKEA in Stockholm’s Kungens Kurva, where the furniture store is undergoing renovation. The recovered flooring, which was returned to Tarkett’s factory, was ground and cleaned of glue and concrete residue using a new process developed in-house by the company. The recycled materials were then used to produce new flooring for the IKEA store in Jönköping. In total, the project is estimated to have saved close to 100 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Dag Duberg, Nordic sustainability manager at Tarkett, says: ‘This project is an excellent example of a circular economy in practice and we are extremely grateful for the great collaboration we have with IKEA Retail Sweden that has made it possible. We have a long history of recycling manufacturing and installation waste, but now we can also show that we can recycle old flooring, which is brilliant. This is a beacon for future endeavours and we believe that we will see many more collaborations like this down the line.’
In the renovation project, the floors from the IKEA store in Kungens Kurva were torn out, loaded into special containers and then transported back to Tarkett’s factory in Ronneby. The technology to clean and recycle post-use homogeneous vinyl floors has been in operation at Tarkett since the beginning of 2019. The process is extremely resource-efficient as the entirety of the recovered floor can be used as recycled content for new floors. This oneof- a-kind flooring project posed a number of practical challenges, but also demonstrated the benefits and possibilities of circular concepts. New flooring produced from the recycled raw material from Kungens Kurva have already been installed at the IKEA store in Jönköping.
Jonas Carlehed, sustainability manager for IKEA Retail Sweden, says: ‘We have an ambitious goal for IKEA to become circular by 2030. This means extending the service life of both products and materials. Taking old flooring from one store, having it recycled by our supplier and then using it as raw materials for new floors in other stores benefits not only us, but also the planet. The project’s climate savings of close to 100 tonnes of CO2 emissions shows the power and potential of a circular economy in action.’ www.tarkett.com
