IKEA

Ikea announced the end of the publication of its annual catalogue after 70 years due to an increasing shift to online browsing and shopping.

Konrad Grüss, an Ikea executive, said in a statement that the company has "taken the emotional but rational decision to respectfully end the successful career" of both the print and digital versions of the catalogue and that "turning the page with our beloved catalog is in fact a natural process since media consumption and customer behaviors have changed".

Ikea will release a smaller catalogue next year that will be "filled with great home furnishing inspiration and knowledge" to celebrates the catalogue's history.

From October 2021, the "IKEA" Group will stop selling disposable alkaline batteries to reduce waste. According to its own information, the Swedish company sold about 300 million alkaline batteries worldwide between September 2018 and August 2019. By replacing this amount with rechargeable batteries, IKEA calculates that 5,000 tons of waste can be avoided annually.

The Ikea store in Wetzlar near the German city of Frankfurt had agreed to let the local mosque use the car park for their prayers. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic distancing measures were required and in a Facebook post, the Muslim community IGMG Wetzlar FATİH CAMİİ thanked the local police and the store for their help in making the prayers possible.

After a video of a woman masturbating in an IKEA store in China went viral, the company released a statement reminding people not to masturbate in its stores. The video, which allegedly has been scrubbed from Chinese social media, shows the woman touching herself on various furniture pieces in IKEA showrooms. The statement of the Swedish furniture store said that they would take “even more careful security and public cleanliness measures” and asked customers to “browse stores in an orderly and civilised way”.

The furniture retailer and producer from Sweden has announced that in their pursuit of using 100% materials that are renewable or recycled by 2030, they have reached the milestone of 70% in 2018.

The Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg has gotten an unexpected gift from IKEA. In one of the stores, 50,000 face masks have been found that were bought during the bird flu outbreak. After finding them stocked away in a warehouse the management agreed to donate them to Sweden's biggest hospital.