I bet you're so familiar with IKEA's iconic POÄNG chair that you can easily draw it from memory: its bent wood, cantilevered frame and simple upholstery create a single, swooping motion in profile. You may have owned it at one point (are sitting in it now, even!), and have a fondness for its little bounce.

You've no doubt also seen it a dozen times abandoned on a sidewalk or alley, hoping for a second chance in someone else's home. For many people, this is exactly how they envision the end of this chair's life: discarded. But we designers know the sad fact that, once they're plucked from street-side abandonment, too many of our objects end up in a landfill – their ultimate end-of-life – where the chemicals and plastics they were made from will contaminate the air and the watershed.

IKEA knows this too. They also know that, instead of languishing in a landfill, the materials used to make POÄNG could be the raw material banks of the future. They are not sitting still with this knowledge; they've in fact been spending the past couple years redesigning their entire product line for the circular economy. It's quite momentous.