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Ikea, Coca-Cola and Walmart Use Creative Efforts to Reduce Waste
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Ikea, Coca-Cola and Walmart are paving the way for the future of waste reduction by rolling out innovative and creative ways to cut down on waste production.
Furnishings company Ikea has developed a Save the Furniture program in Belgium, which allows people to bring in old furniture for a voucher. Ikea then sells the used furniture for the same value as the voucher. Ikea is currently working on introducing a pilot program in the U.S. next year.
In an effort to reduce food waste, Walmart has changed its “best by” and “sell by” product date verbiage to “best used by.” The company also diverts food waste from entering the landfill by taking 25,000 tractor-trailers full of food waste to anaerobic digesters.
Coca-Cola has launched a number of reuse water pilot programs, which have helped the company reduce water by 30 percent, according to Coca-Cola Chief Sustainability Officer Bea Perez. The company also has turned recycled bottled into luxury goods, such as scarves and bags.
Fortune has more details on these efforts:
Take, make, and dispose—for years that has been the developed world’s economic model. This consumption cycle led the World Bank to estimate that the globe was on track to produce 6 million metric tons of solid waste per day by 2025, up from 3.5 million metric tons in 2010. But there are signs the take-make-dispose paradigm is shifting, and some of the world’s largest companies are helping to drive change through their scale.
At Fortune’s Brainstorm E conference in Carlsbad, Calif. on Monday, the chief sustainability officers of Ikea, Walmart and Coca-Cola discussed what they’re doing to improve their companies’ and consumers’ environmental footprints.
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