The easiest joke to make about IKEA is that few of its products—from shelves to meatballs—are made from what they seem. But even particleboard still requires wood—and a lot of it, when you’re selling 100 million products every year. 
 
 According to Pacific Standard, IKEA uses almost one percent of the world’s commercial wood supply. That’s 17.8 million cubic yards, or 3.2 million cubic miles .00326499108 cubic miles. 
 
 Plenty of critics would argue that IKEA is unnecessarily depleting the world's forests, given the short half-life of most of its products. To its credit, though, IKEA seems pretty committed to sourcing its materials sustainably; 25 percent of its wood is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which ensures that the wood is legally and sustainably sourced (the goal is to increase that figure to 50 percent within the next five years). 
 
 It turns out that IKEA actually split its wood sourcing and production arm into its own company, Swedwood, back in 1991. Right now, it employs 15,000 people at 46 different manufacturing sites, where the engineering group sources, harvests, and readies raw wood for production. Now, if only some intrepid photojournalist would go visit. [Pacific Standard] ||||| (PHOTO: COURTESY OF IKEA) 
 
 • One percent of all the world's commercially used wood—totaling 17.8 million cubic yards in 2012—is used to make IKEA products. 
 
 • One in two babies in America today is born to an unwed mother. In 1980, the number was one in five. 
 
 • One percent of Americans live in Iowa; so do 31 percent of American pigs. 
 
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 • One disease—diabetes—accounts for 13 percent of all U.S. medical-care spending, a total of $176 billion last year. 
 
 • One counselor is employed for every 1,016 public-school students in California. That is the highest ratio in the U.S., and more than double the national average. 
 
 Sources: IKEA; National Center for Family & Marriage Research; U.S. Census Bureau; U.S. Department of Agriculture; American Diabetes Association; American School Counselor Association. ||||| Resource and energy independence We’re cutting costs and protecting resources by making more from less, turning waste into resources and switching to renewable energy. By using resources more sustainably, we can be part of global efforts to protect the environment and tackle climate change. Already, 91% of materials used in our products are renewable, recyclable or recycled. Our goal is for all main materials to be renewable, recyclable or recycled by FY15. All wood used in our products is sourced from suppliers that meet our IWAY Forestry Standard and we’ve increased the amount of wood we use from forests certified to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards to 23% IKEA works with WWF and the Better Cotton Initiative to help make cotton farming more sustainable. In FY12 we invested €1.9 million in sustainable cotton farming projects, reaching more than 100,000 farmers. 34% of our cotton came from preferred sources, including from farmers licensed to grow Better Cotton. We are investing €1.5 billion in renewable energy, focusing on wind and solar. This will take us closer to our target to produce as much renewable energy as the energy consumed in IKEA Group stores and buildings by FY20. In FY12 we produced renewable energy equivalent to 34% of our total energy consumption. At the end of the year, we had 250,000 solar panels on our buildings and 83 wind turbines in operation.
– IKEA, the Swedish furniture chain so massive it employs 150,000 people in hundreds of stores in almost 30 countries, now eats up an incredible 1% of the world's entire commercial wood supply, reports Pacific Standard. That was 17.8 million cubic yards in 2012—an amount so unfathomable that for more than 20 years IKEA, which was incorporated in 1943, has managed it all through its own wood sourcing and production company, Swedwood, reports Gizmodo. IKEA does appear to be trying to harvest some of that wood sustainably, with 23% of it certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, meaning it is both sustainably and legally sourced, IKEA reports. Still, there is no sidestepping the company's impact worldwide. With 212 million copies printed every year, its catalog is more than twice as widely distributed as the Bible, and the company distributed a whopping 2.5 billion little wooden dowels in 2011, according to the Telegraph, which adds that an estimated one in five babies in the UK was conceived in an IKEA bed. (Speaking of baby-making, check out how IKEA recently celebrated Valentine's Day.)