Ikea has a recycling innovation for its catalog

Catalogs have to be among the most recycled items on Earth. Even in this era of email and texting, dead tree catalogs clog mailboxes, advertising everything from designer clothes to gourmet food. More often than not they go straight from the mailbox to the recycle bin, to eventually be pulped, processed, and turned into paper all over again.

The Ikea catalog is one of the most common and widely read catalogs, filled with the Swedish company’s ready-to-assemble furniture more noted for its functionality than with any kind of style. It is also the most widely recycled catalog, once the recipient has read its contents.

Ikea in Belgium, according to Gizmodo, has come up with a recycling innovation for its catalogs. If you happen to be in Belgium and have one of the iconic catalogs, you can bring it to the nearest Ikea store. Ikea will then shred the catalog and use it to stuff a new line of pillows, called the KUSS. The pattern on the pillow has been designed by Charles Kaisin. The pattern is said to represent the cellulose molecule that makes up the raw material of paper pulp.

All in all, making pillows stuffed with shredded catalogs is a clever public relations gambit as well as an advertisement for the utility of recycling. Ikea likely spends a lot of money printing those catalogs and mailing them all over the world. By reusing them in a product that can then be sold in the stores, the company is able to balance out that cost to some extent.