In today’s fast-paced world, everyone is obsessed with trends. From the advent of fast fashion to the ever-expiring and re-imagined iPhone, countless items are produced with one idea in mind: new is cool. The question of necessity scarcely enters the equation. Consumers often buy products that will only last for a limited amount of time before going out of style or fading into planned obsolescence – without stopping to think about the impact that their purchases have on the environment.

Popular furniture company, IKEA, is trying to change that mindset.

Taking the opposite approach

In its latest ad, IKEA Norway travels to dark and desolate places, showing pieces of IKEA furniture that have seen better days. Instead of leaving the broken, dilapidated chairs and cabinets lying in junkyards or abandoned on the side of the road, IKEA brings them home and gives them new life. By showing how seemingly irreparable items can be rebuilt and reused, IKEA’s Trash Collection 2021 ad encourages consumers to think twice before throwing away their old furniture. IKEA’s Marketing and Communications Manager, Tobias Lien, recently said of the campaign:

“Too much of our furniture ends up in the trash, and with this campaign we wanted to show how it doesn’t need to. Often the products are just fine or maybe they just need a few small spare parts. To show how little it takes, we have therefore collected some of them and given them a second chance at Ikea.”

Building a sustainable future

This isn’t the first time IKEA has emphasized the importance of environmental consciousness in its advertising. Last month, IKEA released an ad where a robot family uses glassware to store leftovers instead of throwaway plastic containers, and last year, the company produced an ad featuring a garbage meteorite that slowly breaks apart as people stop using single-use items. It even made a cookbook titled “The Scraps Book” – with creative recipes that prevent those random leftover kitchen ingredients from going to waste, which is downloadable for free as an e-book on its website.

IKEA aims to become climate positive by 2030, with the goal of eventually making all of its products from recycled or renewable materials. This latest ad helps promote its new furniture buy-back offering, as well as its offer to supply new spare parts so customers can repair items they still want to use.