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The world's largest furniture retailer has unveiled plans to rent its products to consumers for the first time, as it strives to become a 'net-positive' business by 2030.

Vegas still prides itself on selling unfettered indulgence. Round-the-clock gambling, high-end nightclubs and decadent restaurants are not going away. Yet the opening of the Strip's first green space last month is further evidence that, regarding its relationship to the environment, Sin City is turning a new leaf. Featuring native Southwestern plants, recycled metal furniture and fountains built with locally sourced quartz, The Park, as it's called, is designed to create a sustainable microcosm of the surrounding desert landscape and provide a leafy path away from the Strip's tourist-choked sidewalks. It's a bold move away from fabulist themes that ignore the local ecosystem.

British shoppers could be unknowingly buying wooden furniture, flooring and even food items that are byproducts of destructive illegal logging in the Amazon, environmental campaigners are warning. Friends of the Earth is calling on ministers to make companies reveal the source of their products in order to stop the black market trade. Last week human rights watchdog Global Witness revealed that 185 environmental activists were killed in 2015, many of whom had been trying to stop illegal logging in the Amazon. An estimated 80% of Brazilian hardwood is illegally logged.

Furniture retailer IKEA sold its development and supply chain division to a group set up by founder Ingvar Kamprad, and it will invest $1.06 billion of the $5.5 billion sale proceeds in forests and recycling ventures, the company said. IKEA owns forests in the Baltic region and Romania, and it uses recyclable packaging.

Some of the world's biggest companies are seeing waste reduction and energy efficiency as opportunities to help the bottom line. Wal-Mart is changing its sell-by labeling to reduce food waste, while IKEA is running furniture-recycling and clean-energy initiatives to reduce its costs. "We've taken power from a cost to profit center," says IKEA Chief Sustainability Officer Steve Howard.

IKEA recently got a slap on the wrist from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which suspended IKEA's certification after discovering that the Swedish furniture giant's subsidiary, Swedwood, has been cutting 600-year-old trees in Karelia, Russia, near the border of Finland

Ikea has reportedly had its certificate suspended by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) after the discovery that the furniture chain has been cutting 600-year-old trees in Russia.

IKEA, the world's biggest furniture retailer, plans to spend 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion) on renewable energy and steps to help poor nations cope with climate change, the latest example of firms upstaging governments in efforts to slow warming.

Nestlé will use the How2Recycle logo on select products to help keep its recoverable packaging out of the landfill. The program currently has more than 40 member companies including The Clorox Company, Kimberly-Clark, Sealed Air, and others.

Largely recognized as a furniture retailer, IKEA also derives revenue from its store-based restaurants, where the company says it is working to make sustainable, affordable, transparent, traceable and animal welfare-friendly practices the norm.