Rotterdam, 7 oktober 2016, “I never fully realized IKEA’s true power until we did this project,” says Matthieu Leroy, Sustainability Specialist at IKEA Media Production. To improve the green procurement of paper and print for its 200-million-copy catalogue, Media Production of the furniture giant from Sweden teamed up with Except Integrated Sustainability. Together they worked with suppliers, Trade Extensions, and Deloitte on creating the world’s largest sustainability-driven Self-Learning Supply Chain.

Food security is a critical issue worldwide, particularly in arid regions, where unfavorable local production conditions mean a dangerous dependency on food imports. In Saudi Arabia, nearly 80% of all food is imported, making the country and others like it extremely vulnerable to shocks and systemic disruptions to the global food system. Industry-changing Serenity Farms offers Saudi Arabia and similar regions a sustainable and profitable way to produce food locally, creating jobs, and using only sunlight and seawater.

On 17th April 2015, IUCN organized the Leaders for Nature forum in Eindhoven. Except supported IUCN in a year long trajectory to prepare and guide the Forum in a new format. This included concept development, stakeholder involvement and preparation of the challenges.

The preparations resulted in 10 challenges brought in by the network of Leaders for Nature. Over 150 participants from business, NGOs and government joined the forum. Guided by Except, teams worked on the most pressing natural capital challenges.

The IKEA catalogue with more than 200 million copies is the largest annual print run in the world. IKEA Media Production has worked diligently to improve the catalogue’s sustainability performance. To find new ways to boost its performance, IKEA Media Production engaged Except. Together we applied a new systems-thinking approach and found powerful ways to raise performance.

With implementation partners Trade Extensions and Deloitte we created new visual big data tools in less than a year. Together we realized a sustainability-driven learning supply chain that is now helping transform the biggest paper and print suppliers worldwide.

Natural Capital plays a title role in our economy. To help you clarify the relationship between your economic activities and Natural Capital, Except and NXTE developed the Natural Capital Quick Scan. The scan delivers instant insight and suggests dozens of ways to mitigate risks and pick up on opportunities.

LC Packaging serves customers across the globe with packaging products to protect, preserve and transport goods. Except was requested to assess its baseline sustainability performance.

For Inter-IKEA we boosted the sustainability performance of IKEA's catalogue by optimizing the entire supply chain with one small but smart big data tool. The tool includes data dashboards for purchasers, suppliers and retailers, affecting the entire life cycle of the catalogue.

The big-data supply chain tools resulted in massive sustainability gains in energy, waste, water and more, right from the first year, and increasing each year after. Because of the catalogue print volume, this project positively affects the world's entire print industry. Its yearly improvements now ripple out beyond to adjacent industries.

Read the project case study below on the project's process, strategy, innovation products, and further improvement processes.

IKEA Media Production engaged Except to showcase the sustainability achievements and ambitions of its 200-million-copy catalogue. Together we created a storytelling infographic for the IKEA customer-facing staff, and a data-packed dashboard for internal stakeholders such as store co-workers, catalogue responsibles, PR, social media, communication, sustainability and marketing managers and teams. The tools have been introduced to thousands of employees, permeating learning and awareness.

In collaboration with KWS-Infra and tender office GAIM, Except organized  an innovation session  for a sustainable approach to the demolition of a part of the Catharijnesingel in the center of Utrecht. The approach reponds to the sustainability goals set by the municipality of Utrecht.

Under the name of Excellent Areas ("Excellente Gebieden"), a number of Dutch home construction companies and municipalities are engaged in an experiment to use the building standards of 2015 and 2020, today. By the nature of these future building standards, there is much to learn for these actors before they can profitably apply them.

AgentschapNL is the facilitator of the Exemplary Neighborhoods project, and they asked us to evaluate the instruments they have set up for the learning trajectory.

Serenity Farms is a concept for a sustainable 110ha greenhouse facility for profitable food production in arid climates. The first site is to be located on the west coast of Saudi Arabia, under the vision of the Reza Investment Company. It will be the largest sustainable greenhouse operation in the world. The only water it uses is salt water sourced from the red sea, and is powered entirely by the sun. The core of Serenity Farms is a high tech food production solution that provides fresh fruits and vegetables for 170.000 people.