IKEA's Hidden Waste: When Storage Bins Don't Fit

IKEA talks a lot about sustainability—wind turbines, FSC-certified wood, circular economy pledges. But there's a blind spot the size of your garage: their products constantly change dimensions. The KALLAX shelf got smaller. SAMLA bins got new lids that don't fit old boxes. BILLY bookcases shift hole spacing. Every change is justified as an efficiency gain, but what about the plastic bins that end up in landfills because they're a few millimeters off? This episode explores the tension between IKEA's genuine sustainability efforts and the planned discontinuity of their product lines. We trace how the EU's new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) targets repairability but misses backward compatibility entirely—and ask whether industrial standards like the Eurobox system could offer a model for consumer goods. If shipping containers can be standardized, why can't storage bins?