To Go Green, Ikea Plans to Sell a Vegetarian Swedish 'Meatball'

With more than 300 giant, warehouse-style stores across the world, and ubiquitous, cheap furniture that eats up a full percent of the world's commercial wood supply, IKEA isn't a retailer with a particularly small carbon footprint. So product developers at the Swedish furniture purveyor are honing in on how they can help fight climate change by making adjustments to one of their most popular products: the iconic Swedish meatballs.

Their plan? Go vegetarian. Each year, IKEA's cafes sells an insane 150 million meatballs, made of a recipe calling for beef and pork. Pigs and, especially, cows are two major contributors to methane gas emission, and recent research from Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology has argued that reducing meat and dairy consumption from these gassy animals might even be crucial to reaching United Nations' emission reductions goals. So offering a vegetarian option really could help IKEA, at least in one small way, go green.