Pia Heidenmark Cook is one of Europe’s leading Environmental, Social & Corporate Governance (ESG) speakers, celebrated for her strategic leadership in embedding sustainability at the heart of global business.
As the former Chief Sustainability Officer at IKEA, Pia played a pivotal role in transforming the brand’s environmental agenda into a blueprint for large-scale, systemic change. With over two decades of experience in driving corporate responsibility, she now advises international boards and C-suites on ESG integration, circular economy principles, and future-proofing business models.
In this exclusive interview, Pia shares her insights on the real-world challenges of operationalising sustainability, the urgency of adopting circular frameworks, and why inaction is no longer an option for businesses seeking long-term relevance.
Q: Since launching IKEA’s ‘People & Planet Positive’ agenda in 2012, how has embedding sustainability into core strategy reshaped the business?
Pia Heidenmark: “I think it’s impacted in many different ways.
“First of all, when we launched it in 2012, it was the first, I would say, more business sustainability strategy. We’ve had strategies and policies since the 1980s, but this one was more really written for the non-practitioner—so much more concrete with clear goals, much more around integration and embedding.
“I think from that on, it became much more of, this is something we do as a business because it’s the right thing to do. It’s about future-proofing the business, it’s about cost saving, it’s about avoiding future costs. It’s about creating new opportunities, avoiding risks.
“So I think it really became part of how we do business, and it’s a key part of the business plan and the strategic landscape of the company.
“If I look at where we were 13 years ago to where we are today, and then knowing that there’s so much yet to come, but it is a much more professional sustainability organisation. A much more professional organisation in general is working with sustainability in a completely different way.”
Q: Based on IKEA’s journey, what core principles should businesses adopt to move beyond CSR rhetoric and embed sustainability at the heart of operations?
Pia Heidenmark: “I think every company needs to go on their journey because every company is different—your different culture, values, different business and sector.
“But I think some universal things are connecting it to who you are. Sustainability is not a side business. It’s not a side activity. It’s not a ‘do good and feel good’ activity.
“Those are kind of potential outcomes, but that should really not be the reason why you do it. It’s because you understand the impact you’re having on the planet and on people, on society.
“And you also see how everything going on around us—climate change, inequality, biodiversity loss, you name it—how that will impact you as a company and the future P&L of the company.
“And using that understanding to really look at what are the material topics for us to address and really making that plan, daring to set daunting targets. Because I think you have to set targets that are reachable, but still reachable with huge effort, because that’s what’s required.
“I think setting those all-in 100% goals, showing to the organisation that you cannot opt out, you cannot choose to be the business unit that’s not involved. We all need to move. And really engaging leaders, co-workers at every level and really working with accountability.
“I mean, there’s not a sustainability process in a company—unless you are a truly sustainable company where the whole purpose of the company is doing something that has to do with sustainability—which is not the majority of companies on the planet right now.
“So you need to integrate sustainability deliverables and tasks into the real estate process, into the commercial process, into the product design process. It’s really about getting it in there, in the process.”
Q: The circular economy is often cited as a critical path forward—how do you define it, and do you see it as a truly attainable model for global business?
Pia Heidenmark: “Depending on how you define it? But I don’t really think we have a lot of choice, so it has to be realistic. We need to make it realistic.
“And again, I think with acting today and testing and learning and starting, we have a fairer chance of achieving it than waiting for some perfect solution that someone will find out.
“I think that’s a key learning when it comes to sustainability—that there’s not one solution. If it’s on climate with carbon pricing, or we kind of tend to have this one shiny object that’s going to save us all, and it’s not going to be like that.
“The circularity is one methodology that will help us achieve this.”
Q: What would you say to organisations still hesitant or slow to act on sustainability, particularly those rooted in legacy models or carbon-intensive industries?
Pia Heidenmark: “Tick tock, tick tock.
“I find it—especially if you are in Northern Europe and in the Western economy—I have full respect that many other countries, and many that have been also very hit by COVID and also still dealing with a lot of poverty, where it’s putting food on the table and just taking care of the health of the citizens,
“It maybe feels a bit far off to think about five to ten years down the road with climate change. But we also know that these are the countries and citizens that would be the most negatively impacted by climate change.
“So I think it’s not a lot of choice. And yet there’s still people who are still talking about climate change not existing or, ‘Let’s wait and see until we have all the fantastic technology’.
“So there’s still that. And it’s hard for a lot of sectors—if you are in a sector that is not fully future-proof because the product you have built was perfect 100 years ago, 50 years ago, ten years ago.
“But we know we need to shift away from coal and fossil fuel. We know we need to shift away from meat. It’s kind of obvious when you look at science that that’s what needs to happen.
“Of course, it’s really hard if you built your entire business model and income stream on that. So I have full respect for that. I think as much as we had to innovate as companies now with digital—where customers really shifted very fast during COVID, before COVID, but really peaked with COVID—we see the same.
“And you don’t want to be an incumbent when customers have shifted because once they’ve shifted, they will see you as not a great choice. So I really hope that more companies move away from thinking about sustainability as risk, legislation, doing good, charity, but really starting to see these are the frameworks.
“The ESG is the framework. The planetary boundaries is the framework we need to operate in. So it’s limitations, but through limitations you can really inspire ingenuity, entrepreneurship and start to find solutions.
“And there are solutions. I think we just need to do them at scale and at speed, and we need to invest more money.
“There’s too much money still going into the old and too little going to the new. But definitely, I really hope that very soon there will be very few companies that are kind of sitting and waiting and thinking that this has to do with someone else and not them—because it has to do with all of us.”
This exclusive interview with Pia Heidenmark Cook was conducted by Jack Hayes.
