How Ikea Plunders the Planet

*7.3

Status

Released

Production

Disclose Film

Aired

2024-01-22

How Ikea Plunders the Planet

Investigative journalists working for Disclose spent over a year investigating the production chain of the furniture giant which generated a 44.6 billion euros revenue in 2022 and attracts over 5 billion visitors to its stores and website every year. From the boreal forests of Sweden to Brazilian plantations and New Zealand coastlines, they uncovered how IKEA intensively exploits wood around the world, fuels the illegal trafficking of this resource and threatens the last precious European forests. Long overlooked, intensive logging is now sparking outrage and anger among citizens in Poland and the Baltic countries, who are increasingly concerned about the fate of their countries' public forest domains and biodiversity loss. In Romania, where IKEA owns 50,000 hectares of forests, activists are risking their lives mobilizing against the timber mafia. This film tells the expansion of a discreet forest predator, grappling with the limits of the planet's resources.