
IKEA Loves Wood: Flatpack Forests in the Carpathian Mountains
IKEA uses almost 15 million cubic meters of wood a year, more than any other furniture company on earth, and this Danish investigative film traces where a large share of it comes from: the Romanian Carpathians, home to some of the last old-growth forests left in Europe. Biologists and local activists lead the way into logging sites and surviving stands of ancient beech and spruce, laying out how clear-cutting for IKEA's supply chain is changing the biodiversity of a landscape that took centuries to form. Environmental groups present data and field observations on the scale of the felling, while IKEA representatives respond on camera that the company enforces strict ethical sourcing rules and vets its suppliers carefully. The film sets that corporate assurance against footage from the forest floor and testimony from people who live near the cutting, letting the gap between policy statement and visible logging operation speak for itself. It closes without a tidy resolution, leaving the question of who verifies a global supply chain's promises wide open.