Closing the loop

As creators and innovators, we uphold the belief that we bear a responsibility to ensure our offerings embody sustainability at every stage—from inception to repurposing. This conviction fuels our commitment to developing protocols and strategies that govern our choices and actions.

Embracing circularity means departing from the conventional design paradigm of make, use, dispose, and instead embracing a model that integrates disposal into the genesis of new creations. Our guiding principles revolve around the three pillars of sustainability—reduce, reuse, and recycle—as we strive to minimise waste generation and reimagine the utility of residual materials.

One of the key ways we design for circularity is through the use of recycled material. All of our products contain a percentage of recycled polyester fibre, dictated by the level of acoustic absorption required. We aim to include as much recycled content as possible without compromising the acoustic performance of the product. This is why you’ll see some products with a minimum of 80% recycled content, and others with 60%. In compliance with ISO 14021:2016, our sustainability team calculates the amount of recycled polyester used in our products twice a year, ensuring our claims are accurate and up-to-date.

We understand the value of the materials that we have available to us, and that’s why our team are constantly looking to push the capabilities of the materials that we use. We won’t settle for ‘good enough’ and are dedicated to innovating how we manufacture and design sustainably. This work has our team working to develop solutions that embody true circularity, addressing the building sector’s imperative to tackle waste management. This work can’t be achieved by one organisation and requires the combined effort of our industry. Working alongside our peers, we can change the way we design, the materials we use, and how we utilise waste.

We aim to minimise waste trimmings as much as possible by optimising material use in our designs, however, with current technology some waste is inevitable.

Recognising that we could influence the amount of waste our products created during production, we conducted rigorous testing and research to create a bespoke solution. The result was an industry-first technology that transforms acoustic panel trimmings into PET pellets that can then be moulded into new accessory products.

By introducing this chipper into our process, we can now operate a zero-waste manufacturing line. Since the installation of our machine in May 2022, 250,000 kgs of material have been repurposed into new products. Through regular upgrades and R&D, we expect to increase our recycling capacity significantly each year.