Crafting more from less with Triboo’s circular furniture solutions

To make a real impact, sustainable design must advance on multiple fronts. It has to tackle waste and emissions in production, along supply chains and in logistics and, perfectly, re-use existing waste and never become waste.

The Dutch company Triboo is determined on making just those advances, offering offices and other businesses more sustainable furniture and fittings but also a radical new model for creating a sustainable office environment and dealing with waste.

A key plank of its business is tabletops, desktops, shelving, acoustic panels, privacy booths and internal wall systems. The sustainability USP is that, depending on their thickness, they use 60-90% less materials than traditional panels but are far stronger and do not warp. Triboo can create panels up to five metres in length, perfect for one-piece ultra-long tables tops.

The secret sauce is a patented internal grid system, #GREENGRIDZ, developed in the Netherlands 10 years ago. This grid is sandwiched between high density fibreboard panels produced in Ireland using shredded cuts of wood, from sustainably managed forests, not big enough to be used in furniture manufacturing.

As Triboo founder Marc van der Heijden argues, ‘the really innovative idea is not to use material’. This more-from-less system means that the manufacturing process also creates 60% less CO2 than traditional methods. And the massive weight saving means that far more panels can be moved around in one truck, cutting down on logistics-based emissions.

At the end of their useful life, these panels are turned into high quality active carbon pellets and dust used in water and air filtration. And Triboo is now innovating #greengridz, developing 100% recyclable panels produced using waste paper and cardboard.

Van der Heijden is the first to admit that the grid structure isn't quantum physics, but as with many sustainability innovations, the real trick is viability, and producing products of the right quality and at scale. ‘The idea is very simple but to produce it at speed and industrial scale, that is the difficult thing. Triboo now produces between 5,000 and 7,000 sheets a week.’

The company, founded in 2016, is based in Zevenhuizen in the Netherlands with an office and showroom in Copenhagen and most of its largest customers are local.  Van der Heijden is determined on sustainable expansion. That means opening satellite manufacturing sites to cut down on delivery distances and Triboo is currently looking to opening manufacturing facilities in in Denmark, Germany and Poland.

Van der Heijden’s background is in logistics and that gave him a particular oversight of the waste involved in the making, shipping and trashing of furniture. ‘Every year in Europe we throw away 11bn kilos of furniture,’ he says. ‘I just thought there needs to be a change in how we handle and build furniture.’

His larger commitment is to a radical kind of circularity. He insists that the idea that enduring design and materials are the best kind of sustainability, that we should simply keep what we have, doesn't really cut it. The needs of companies and customers do change, they do want new and different. And circular manufacturing is the sustainable way of recognising that reality.

‘Companies throw furniture away because it's obsolete or the technical specifications change or the design isn't up to date anymore,’ says van der Heijden. ‘The way people work changes but raw materials can change shape to match new desires or use cases. So we started looking for 3D-printable materials made out of the waste stream.’

The result is Triboo’s NeverEnding furniture collection, essentially 3D-printed table frames, planters, lamp shades and more created using recycled plastics and waste from natural fibres. It also presses waste to create table tops.

It made a unique table for CSU, the Netherlands’ largest cleaning company using decommissioned and crushed Henry vacuum cleaners. ‘You know, the ones that smile at you,’ enthuses van der Heijden. ‘We threw them in the shredder and made coffee tables out of them.’ And of course these 3D printed designs can be re-shredded and the process can happen all over again. It is even possible to make products using a client’s own waste, turning insurance policies, energy meters, recycled jeans, out-of-circulation Euro notes and locally grown hemp into printable materials.

Critically, van der Heijden wants to create a network of 3D printers, limiting logistics as much as possible to the last mile, and already has print hubs in the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovakia and Abu Dhabi. ‘We can send our furniture not by trucks or sea but by electronic highway,’ he says. ‘I want to get furniture off the roads or at least only drive the last mile and reduce overproduction. With 3D printing you don't have to make 10,000 pieces and throw away 2,000 because you haven't sold them. You can print to order from local waste streams. I'm just dedicated to using less material and creating less waste and CO2.’

Van der Heijden’s more radical vision is for companies not to think about the equipment they need but of the raw materials they have and how that material can be re-worked and re-used. Triboo is now offering ‘furniture as a service’ and van der Heijden imagines the company as a raw materials ‘bank’, reworking and reshaping that materials resource to meet the changing needs of its customers.

He admits there is a long way to go but insists that Triboo is scaling and advancing quickly. ‘We are not everywhere yet but we are only six years old and we have made giant leaps. We are ready to scale and work with bigger organisations on better solutions.’

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