The main difficulties involved in making the use of circular materials efficient and profitable in furniture are explained by the expert on the circular economy Arthur Huang, founder of Miniwiz, a design and consulting studio with a furniture brand – Pentatonic – that uses only post-consumer materials: “We have to develop more efficient methods of collection and sorting of materials. The technology of biodegradable materials is still in its early phase.
And it does not correspond to the performance requirements of industry, because the biodegradable factor has a negative influence on the durability of products. In my view, the path is to use non-disposable materials and to transform them into something beautiful, so they can continue to be used in closed production cycles. A circular economy reduces the need for biodegradable materials. In any case, we are working on the use of biodegradable waste from the food industry, and even from insects. In terms of conceptualization of the circular economy, Europe is ahead of the rest of the world. Nevertheless, various passages still have to be ironed out: this can be seen in the fact that lots of trash is sent to Asia or to incinerators.
The United Kingdom and the Netherlands are the best countries in the proposal of solutions, but they lack the infrastructures required to follow up on those ideas.”
This is the direction taken by the Rotterdam-based studio The New Raw, which for the city of Amsterdam has created a prototype for benches using 3D printing and plastic pellets recycled from municipal waste.
The Swedish group Form Us With Love worked for four years to develop the Odger chair for IKEA, composed of wood-plastic composite (WPC) sourced up to 70% from IKEA pallets.
“The material has good structural properties,” says John Löfgren, co-founder and creative director of FUWL. “Thanks to the support of a giant like IKEA, we have been able to conduct extensive research and testing, justified by the expected production volume. In economic terms,” he explains, “it is important for the company itself to be the source of the material.
To encourage the use of products made with post-consumer materials, while lowering production costs, it is necessary to work on their perception. The goal is to make people start to get interested in the origin and quality of things, just as they do with food. The use of circular materials is also a question of production and access to information.”