Reusing Furniture: It Really is Rocket Science

Adopting the Mission based approach developed by NASA and the US government to put a man on the moon may solve the problems stopping greater use of second- hand furniture.

In her book ‘Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism’, Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of Economics at UCL and founder of The Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, writes that ‘problems require not just technological, but also social, organisational and political innovations’ and draws a parallel with the US mission to put a man on the moon. In order to succeed, the US government partnered with, invested in and incentivised the private sector.

This true collaboration relied on an open and fair commercial relationship that put the mission’s goal above individual companies’ ambitions, accepting that there will be failures along the way but acknowledging that rewards would be shared amongst the actors involved. Could this be the answer to unblocking the systematic use of pre-owned furniture in commercial projects?

We’ve established the mission: To Reuse Commercial Furniture. We’ve agreed that this is an essential contribution to reducing carbon generation and that if we’re going to limit the global temperature growth in line with the Paris Agreement, we need to make this happen. Next, we need to get the actors together who can make this possible. The client and the specifier, the project manager, the furniture dealer (2nd hand and new), the new furniture manufacturer and lastly, the government.

Annie Beavis of the fantastically named Not Sustainable consultancy, acknowledges the competitive tension of sharing IP but says that we’ve all got to be bigger than that. Tom Potts from UK manufacturer Orn, put it brilliantly “when we design, we all use the same raw materials, it’s how we put them together that differentiates us”.

All need to accept that each will play a part in the mission’s success and agree that they will benefit from an open commercial relationship. There is an element of risk, of course there is, but the risk of not doing this is far greater. The big player in our team is the government; we need help and support. Jonathan Hindle, Chair of British Furniture

Confederation and MD of KI Europe, told me once that if you go to Government you need to have an ‘ask’, don’t just go with a problem for them to solve. Here’s the Ask: Adopt a venture capitalist approach to investment. Don’t be afraid to fail if the win is a big win and when you win take a share of the gains and drive that back into investment. I’m often faced with the challenge of a remanufactured chair costing not much less that a new equivalent. Let’s forget the carbon saving for a moment and think about inequity of this comparison. If the true value of the new chair includes the cost of the adverse environmental effects of its production then the remanufactured piece would become more cost effective. This is known as the Pigovian tax system whereby a tax is placed on the businesses and individuals “for engaging in actions that produce negative externalities, such as environmental pollution, strain on public healthcare, and other external costs not reflected in the product’s market price.”

For those less inclined to add taxes why not consider reducing VAT on used furniture?

 We should listen to Richard Rhyll, MD of Clear Environment, when he explains that one of his primary challenges is the cost of space. If we’re going to have a consistent supply of used furniture then we need somewhere to put it. How about reducing business rates for companies operating in this sector or getting government sponsored regional hubs?

I understand that for the manufacturers of new furniture this must seem like a huge commercial threat. It doesn’t have to be. The Dutch seem to be far more progressive than us and when I talked to Robert Milder of Van De Sant he offered a wonderful expression; “today’s customers are tomorrow’s suppliers”. Imagine products being designed to be returned to the maker to enter a ‘diffusion range’ that has been remade and re-warranted. It may not be as technically as advanced as their new products but it would give the customer a choice and a level of certainty that doesn’t currently exist. And the business stays with the maker. The opportunity for partnerships with regional manufacturers and the likes of Rype and Crown, who both remanufacture, could mean that work is carried out under license and avoids transporting European design back across the channel

At the BFC’s lunch at The House of Commons the biggest gripe was the lack of support in tackling the skills gap. Young people are not being attracted into the industry and there are severe limits placed on recruiting from overseas. Add remanufacturing into the mix and the pressure will increase. There’s opportunity here that needs more government intervention - not as a bail out but as an investment in growth.

For the client, specifier and project manager, the three main challenges in reusing furniture are cost, supply and risk management. Whilst stock is growing and for the mission to succeed, the designer needs to be able to choose from a range of products that suits the client’s needs. The client needs a warrantee that covers any potential failures but also allows for the accountants to depreciate the asset. The PM needs to know that the product is available and will be delivered to programme. Some of the answers could come from Furniture as a Service or leasing model where the furniture remains in the ownership of the supplier but this will need a radical look at how expenditure is accrued as either Cap Ex or Op Ex., would put huge pressure on suppliers’ cash flow and limit the specifiers’ choice.

The last piece of the puzzle is slightly more ephemeral and is what Adam Strudwick of Perkins & Wills refers to as ‘celebrating a New Beauty’. In our mission we all need to adapt our expectations and to reject the notion that everything has to be new.

The remaining actor is the furniture dealer and guess what, that’s me. We are in the unique position of having the ear of all the stakeholders and can use this position to drive the mission forward. Any organisation with an authentic commitment to greater sustainability will have their own challenges but recognise the fundament need for a shared purpose. This mission is not impossible, we just need to accept it.

Article published in the latest SustainableDesign Magazine

Sustainable Design Collective Awards

The inaugural Sustainable Design Collective Forum took place this week. It was an opportunity for manufacturers and the A&D community to discuss the joint challenges that we face in delivering more sustainable fit outs and look for shared pathways to change. I only wish I’d been there to deliver my industry defining contribution but a dodgy back kept me at home. Boo to the ageing body but Bravo to Joanna Knight and Harsha Kotak for putting the whole day together so brilliantly.

The measure of the success of any event such as this may well be fairly bleak. If the UK doesn’t hit its Paris commitments then we’ve all failed and the recycled plastic chair we’re sitting on won’t make us feel any cooler. Unless it’s been design by the Barber Osgerby. In which case, we’ll feel super cool. Let’s keep our voices heard inside the industry and outside on the streets.

It was great to see one of our incubator partners take the award for innovation. Recoup use 95% salvaged, restored & repurposed materials to create unique, authentic commercial interiors that do good for the planet and the people around us. They work with charities to offer paid work placements for those in need, providing opportunities that encourage wellbeing, skill-development & inclusion. These opportunities range from sessions in their workshop, where they teach basic joinery & furniture restoration techniques, through to days on site, working alongside our team to install our furniture. If you’re not familiar with our Incubator Programme click here.

What I’ve learned from both the SDC and Recoup is that it’s all about telling stories, learning from the past and shaping the future. Let’s keep innovating.

Workplace Design Show 2023

I really enjoyed my day at the Workplace Design Show but ultimately left frustrated. My primary motive was to listen to as many of the talks as possible with the area dedicated to discussions around sustainability being a particular draw. That was a great idea. But why were none of the 120 speakers from furniture manufacturers or pure furniture providers (excluding TFP who ‘Curated’ the discussions)? If we’re serious about making real change then everyone involved needs to be included in the conversation. I’m as interested in the many challenges that manufacturers face as I am about those of the specifiers. It’s a furniture show, let’s hear Pedrali’s head of R&D discuss how to make sustainable office design a tangible achievement with the wonderful Deepak (MCM) and Georgia (Element Four). Sure the manufacturers have their platform in the exhibition but their salespeople are on the stands trying to turn their significant investment into a future return whilst the engineers and designers are back at base trying to deal with scope 3 emissions! Here I go, ranting again. And another thing, do you remember 100% Design on the King’s Road, those were the days….

Circuits and Circularity with ....... Tom Lloyd of Pearson Lloyd

Discussing sustainability with industry leaders and thinkers whilst riding circuits of Regents Park and enjoying a coffee at VIA

Welcome to a series of conversations with influential figures in workplace design where we discuss how we can promote greater sustainability. Today I rode with Tom Lloyd of Pearson Lloyd. ‘Founded in 1997 and led by Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd, the studio works with manufacturers, brands and public bodies to identify and build products, spaces and services that respond to the challenges of the day and enhance our experience of the world.’

 Tom and I met at the entrance to London Zoo on the outer circuit of Regent’s Park. It was 7am, still dark but none of the chill one would expect on a late October morning. If you’ve never witnessed the phenomenon of the pelotons that race around Regent’s Park every morning, it’s quite scarily spectacular. We jumped on the wheels of a group of Hackney design folk who Tom often rides with, but it wasn’t long before the conversation was suffocated by the effort of keeping up with the Pas Normal dressed youngsters. We headed off to VIA cycling emporium.

Loaded with coffee and croissants I asked what approach the studio had to tackling climate change. In the early 20th Century, one of the founding ideas of design was to make things more efficient, more attractive, easier to sell and make more profit. Tom says that today, it’s a question of redefining the hierarchy of the value proposition and instead putting the planet at the top. He says we need to make the planet a participant in the solution. He looks back at the original aim of the studio that he and Luke Pearson founded and says it was to avoid trends and to design for a future relevance. Put simply: keeping that lump of carbon in use for longer. 

There has been a huge shift in the narrative of the Design Council’s output: from the user being at the heart of the process to the planet taking the prominent position. “I really like another phrase,” added Tom, “which is, you have to make the planet a co-beneficiary of your decision making because unless the planet is benefiting from that particular decision, you’re making the wrong decision.” Tom teaches on the furniture design course with a sustainability focus at Nottingham Trent University where he explores a particular theme through the eyes of one of his clients. He is very aware of the real sense of jeopardy felt by his students who are being told that the world is crumbling around them. But despite this, Tom is optimistic that they understand the new narrative and can apply it to every part of their lives. He observes that they are working out how to deal with it. And so must we. 

Tom is also the part time Master of the Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry, where he is using his position to push forward the sustainability agenda within their mission ‘to inspire new generations of creative thinkers to design a better world.’ ‘The focus of my time at the Faculty of Royal Designers is design’s contribution to enhancing Social Justice in the world, with the Climate Emergency being a central component of this challenge.’

A new entrant into the market attempting to respond positively on this issue is Dutch company, Niaga (‘again’ backwards), that talks about the principle of ‘reversible connections’. This means that any two materials that you connect together have to be reversible, hence, always designing for diss-assembly. For example, consider the hugely challenging issue of laminate sitting on top of chip board, how do you reverse the connection between those two materials? It’s a powerful principle that allows for repair, allows for recycling, and allows for re-use. With furniture accounting for approximately 30% of the embodied carbon in a building’s lifecycle it seems obvious that if furniture is designed to be reused then this furniture should be kept in circulation longer that the current 5-10 years. If this was the case, then a furniture subscription service with multiple custodians would demand that chairs and tables could be repaired and refreshed. To do this, however, we need to value a new aesthetic, one that celebrates the old stuff and where the story of the furniture’s past use is obvious and appreciated. The home of the Pearson Lloyd studio has a very strong reuse aesthetic. They kept every bit of steel and timber on site so they could re-use and re-use. They were clear with their contractor saying “don’t bring anything in or off-site that we can’t use again.”

You’d think it was obvious, but Tom tells me that not every brief they receive has impact on the climate at the top of the requirements. In fact, Pearson Lloyd are developing their own circularity brief that they can tag on to any project they feel would work well for the studio. One aspect that particularly interests Tom is the management of waste. How to avoid it (square tables rather than round – more efficient use of materials) and design for reuse and avoiding landfill.  “We’re doing a project with Nottingham Trent University and Modus this term, around waste streams where we’re using Modus’s plywood waste for the students to use for their prototypes. Waste stream is a kind of new material source for designers, and it has to be seen as a sort of logistical alternative; it’s not going into the recycling, it’s going back into the system to be distributed.” In another example he tells me how working with an East London start-up, Batch Works, Pearson Lloyd have designed a range of desk accessories for Bene that are 3D printed using recycled bio-plastic (PLA), sourced from post-consumer food packaging diverted from landfill.. They are effectively mass producing straight off the Pearson Lloyd design files. When Bene sells a thousand desk tidies to a large corporate client who at some point no longer need them, Bene will take them back and regrind them into a new product. “That’s a closed loop system – it’s just one tiny example, but it’s established now and growing”, says Tom. And how does the FM team know what to do with them? Well, that’s the next link, the next part of the connectivity. 

My time with Tom is up. We’ve ridden in circles and our conversation has been anything but linear. But there is purpose and power and Tom has both. On and off the bike.

Launching the Salt & Pegram Incubator Programme

The Salt & Pegram Incubator is part of our ESG Strategy and aims to support and promote companies that share our ambition and sustainability goals. Using our expertise and experience, we help them enter the commercial market, promote their products and services and contribute to the decarbonisation of interior fit out. If your company would like to get involved please get in contact.

We’re incredibly excited to welcome three companies into the programme.

A meeting with Roger Hallam

Last night I stumbled into a meeting with Roger Hallam, joint founder of XR, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil. I’d been invited by the Georgia Elliot-Smith who was also speaking and it’s Georgia’s company, ElementFour, who have just completed our ESG strategy. In a breakout group Roger talked about the evolution of his work in civil disobedience and his business approach to attracting and inspiring others to take the step towards CD. Roger’s work in activism and his phd in studies in the science of mass mobilisation in the tradition of Martin Luther King and Gandhi has led to conclusion that we need 3000 people who prepared to be arrested in order to force the government to make real change. Roger was asking the business community to sense check his work and to help realise his plan. Real change means stopping the opening of more oil fields in the UK. It seems extraordinary when the number of rejections to planning applications for solar fields has increased, particularly in the constituencies of you know who.

So what to do. Zoe Cohen asks us to recalibrate our risk threshold, take direct action and let those you employ do the same without fear of losing their jobs. Donate time, donate money. To activate the 3000 requires both of these things. Lobby and create awareness by engaging with your industry. With our industry. They need our help.

SDC Design Collective

I’m thrilled to be joining the ‘think tank’ group of architects & designers committed to acting as a collective within the workplace design industry.

The New Paradigm: A Designer’s Quest for Material Reuse & Upcycling

I’ve been speaking to Daniel Svahn, an interior and product designer, thinker and author of The New Paradigm: A Designer’s Quest for Material Reuse & Upcycling. 

One of the concerns I often hear is that upcycling has a limited capacity and can only be populated by designer makers making one off pieces. Our industry demands scalability so I was delighted to hear that this is exactly the area in which Daniel is working and that there is  clear support from the Swedish government and other experts within our shared expertise.

In his Masters project he worked with the vast amount of materials being made available through the fit out of both public and private commercial buildings.

‘There is a lot of material being wasted in vain within our field when it comes to used, old or broken furniture and interior products. However, things are now slowly happening, as more actors think holistically, sustainable, and circular. More needs to be done thought and the future role of the furniture/product designer and interior architect needs to be updated and evolved in some respects, I think. The industry, in Sweden, is slowly changing, through a handful of leading companies, but they often lack the creative and aesthetic sense in problem solving when it comes to taking even further steps in this and that’s where the likes of us designers come in. We all need to work more together. Designers, architects, the industry, clients, consumers, and people in general to shift to a more circular way of thinking in most of our dealings in life.”

Svahn goes on to reference leading Swedish companies and initiatives involved in upcycling and reconditioning used or “old” office furniture and sees it as a field that is be growing rapidly with the increasing demand for sustainable alternatives.

White Architects, one of the largest architectural firms with multiple offices around Sweden, are the creators of the reuse-themed Selma Centre in Gothenburg. In addition, contributing to the creation of CC Build, Centre for Circular Building and Construction1 , they are big enough to be advocates for change and thus have the muscles to so. In close collaboration and interplay with the municipality, their Selma Centre project, developed a positive change in legislation and guidelines for how reuse and upcycling may be used in the public sector.

Malmö Upcycling Service (M.U.S) Seeing industrial waste as a material resource for new products that can be sold locally, M.U.S was founded in 2019 by MFA Industrial Designers Anna Gudmundsdottir (1987) and Emilia Borgvall (1990). With their work and collaborations, they aim to rethink design processes and to question the designer’s role and democratic production methods. The concept of using recycled material as a base for small scale production is key and generates highly personal and unique products.

One of the main initiatives is the collaborative hub that is 100Gruppen, the 100 Group, a government funded initiative consisting of a mixed group of devoted companies, organisations, and stakeholders within the field of interior design. The members range from interior architects and architecture firms, through manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, to property developers, renovation companies and even government institutions. They all share the same common goal: to reach 100% circular and sustainable interiors by developing new business models and tools for it.

Svahn concludes that “the main opportunities lie in the positive effects on our climate and the economy, with potential and emerging new economic systems that may generate businesses and profit with less stress on nature in the long run. Whether we deal with pure upcycling, recycling, and material reuse, or in designing new and smart products adapted to a circular system, there are great opportunities for designers. I believe this is the future of sustainable product design and development and a new way of thinking. A new way of designing. A new paradigm.”

 

Daniel and I are working on a seminar for any of you interested in joining our conversation, let me know.

Emotional Durability and the Second Life Marketplace

It will be of no surprise to many of you that I am inspired both when I’m on my bike and when I am thinking about my bike. That’s a lot of inspiration. This week I have read two fascinating pieces whose subjects easily transfer from the cycling industry to ours.

Firstly, I’m going to pinch some very sensible words from a blog piece at Albion Cycling

“The most sustainable product is the one that you already own.”

The current conversation around ‘sustainability’ has a tendency to focus on the materials that garments are made from. Is it made using recycled materials, and is that recycled content generated from post-consumer content from single use plastic?

But what about durability as a measure of sustainability?

When we think about the durability of products, we’re usually assessing their strength, or their ability to work for a long time without breaking or needing to be replaced.

An item’s emotional durability should also be considered in this context.

Emotional Durability – which is how long do you continue using a product before you get tempted towards a newer version (often by a marketing message promising better technology.)

“It is known to be better (in the footprints of carbon, water, & waste terms) to have a ‘Bad Ingredient’ garment that you use for over five years, than several ‘Good Ingredient’ garments that keep needing to be replaced every couple of years, as so much goes into the manufacturing & shipping process.”

Revitalise/ Recondition (normally just giving it a proper wash); Repair/ Resize (resurrect those skills!); Reduce/ ReSell (only buying a Four Season Down Jacket if you get sub zero temperatures for months of the year; plus if you move to warmer climates: selling on performing product); Reappropriate (gear you have fallen out of love with, to a better source like the local cycling club); Relegate to a lower task (like doing the gardening in); & only then should it be Recycled!

Emotional Durability is the key to extending the life of the garment (or piece of furniture. Dom)

picture credited to Albion Cycling

picture credited to Albion Cycling

The Second article ran in Cycling Industry News and reports on Decathlon’s Second Life Marketplace. The scheme will aim to buy back old Decathlon bikes in exchange for money or vouchers to be spent in store. The returned bike will be repaired or refurbished and then sold to consumers via the Decathlon Marketplace. This will assist in stock difficulties and offer consumers entry into the market where price has been a barrier and encourage them not to shop elsewhere.

The link between the two articles is clear: produce well designed and durable products for which we feel an emotional attachment. This ‘value’ can be retained by the manufacturer and then be transferred to second and third users.

Sustainability Stifled By Accreditation

The more people I speak to regarding environmental accreditations the less confidence I have in their ability to deliver real change. The exorbitant cost to manufacturers, large and particularly small, to have their products tested can mean that those making the greatest sustainable impact are excluded from a project. The Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) vision is one that we can all share but when chain of custody is breached at the point of transfer of ownership from a third party to a customer then does it count? I know of a company that makes amazing wooden furniture of the highest quality and with genuine sustainability at the core of their business that isn’t FSC certified. Rather they adhere to the wonderfully dull sounding EU regulation 995/2010 (EU Timber Regulation), which prohibits the placing of illegally harvested timber and timber products (illegal logging) on the European market. But if the project wants FSC then all are missing out.

Rather, wouldn’t it be great if project teams set their vision and goals in line with the company’s cultural ambitions? Communicate these with staff, partners and suppliers and give all of them the confidence to use their expertise to deliver the objectives. Benchmark and evaluate; discover and interrogate, the facts will emerge and the team can discuss their impact.

Last week we missed out on a FX Award for which we were shortlisted. Salt & Pegram and Will + Partners’ furniture strategy for The British Red Cross was the only finalist not to have produced a product. We produced an idea. I think we need to be more bold and let the idea be the champion and free it from stifling accreditation.

The House of Bamboo

Is this the wonder material we should all be using?

I totally get that bamboo is fast growing, easy to farm and requires no pesticide or chemicals to manage its harvesting. It captures carbon - quickly - and can be made into versatile and strong boards and sheets from which the clever people can make furniture. So should we stop with the birch ply thing and go bamboo? As always, it’s not that simple. I asked my good friend The Professor at UCL who explained that the most important factors are the life cycle of the wood, where it is planted and the energy required to process and transport. Beech, birch or bamboo, all are capturing and retaining carbon until they are incinerated or decay in landfill. So the questions are where is comes from, how is it made and what happens when our bamboo furniture is no longer wanted? Has it been designed for a second, third and fourth life? Does the consumer have an appetite for this material beyond a fad? if an oak chair is well crafted in the UK from a European forest and valued by the owner for longer than a bamboo alternative is that a better option? No simple answers but the questions need to be asked.

We’ve been shortlisted for a FX Award!

In partnership with our excellent friends at Will + Partners our Sustain & Preserve approach to furniture provision at The British Red Cross has been shortlisted in the Public, Leisure, or Office Furniture category at this year’s FX award. It’s a massive achievement as the award is usually aimed at products rather than an idea and strategy. It demonstrates the FX team’s desire to look beyond the obvious and see that our sustainable and ambitious alternative can transform an organisation and contribute to reducing its environmental impact.

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Mater Continue to Impress

Development Goals

Sustainability is grounded in everything they do, a key priority is to align their efforts to global recognised standard of commitment.

 By committing to the UN Sustainable Goals protocol, they aim to make an impact in the design- and business industry. Each product in the collection is a commitment to these goals:

Through their partnerships their products find their way into homes, stores, hotels, restaurants or corporate offices all over the world, creating a positive footprint on our planet and its future generations.

 Consumption is a powerful tool for creating change, and they hope to inspire a global design audience to support sustainability, without any compromise in design language and durability.

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