- Title: Starbucks UK to upcycle store waste into furniture
- Date: 20th September 2017
- Summary: VARIOUS LOCATION (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF STARBUCKS COFFEE SHOPS / DRINK BEING PREPARED DOULA, CAMEROON (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PLASTIC BOTTLE WASTE IN RIVER USED PLASTIC BOTTLES CLOGGING RIVER
- Embargoed: 4th October 2017 16:49
- Keywords: Starbucks Pentatonic London Design Festival plastic waste up-cycling Trashpresso
- Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK / FILE
- City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK / FILE
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Pollution,Environment
- Reuters ID: LVA0066ZEJI3F
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Pentatonic is a new furniture and homeware company that wants to make use of one of the world's most abundant resources - trash. From plastic bottles, to old DVDs and discarded mobile phones - they're breaking them down into a usable raw material that can then be re-formed to create new furniture.
The first of their products, previewed at this week's London Design Festival, includes glassware made from the screens of old smartphones and desk chairs made from recycled plastic.
Pentatonic has also partnered with Starbucks UK to turn its plastic coffee cup lids and Frappuccino cups into furniture for its outlets.
"We've just announced a big partnership with Starbucks and so we plan to develop their interior furniture of their cafes with them, using their store waste," Pentatonic co-founder Jamie Hall told Reuters, adding they will initially work with Starbucks UK before expanding Europe-wide.
One of Pentatonic's investors is Taiwanese company Miniwiz, whose "Trashpresso" mobile recycling machine is being used by Pentatonic to demonstrate their method for turning waste plastic into a usable material, albeit on a smaller scale. The solar-powered plant, about the size of a bus, was on display as part of the London Design Festival (Sept. 16-24).
"Trashpresso is a miniaturised recycling factory or recycling plant that actually functions. So you can bring your trash here, whether yourself or Starbucks, and we can take it through a recycling process," explained Pentatonic co-founder Johann Boedecker. "You need to separate all the plastics into their various categories in order to yield something that's usable, with predictable characteristics so you can have the strength and the maunfacturability that you need."
The toll that plastic waste is taking on the environment is a problem that's yet to be solved. More than nine billion tonnes of plastic has been produced since 1950, with most of it discarded in landfills, damaging ecosystems and human health.
Pentatonic wants to initiate a paradigm shift in the production process.
"We're constantly making a self-defeating prophecy in the consumer world in terms of the product landscape. So what we're trying to do is make everything in a different way, thinking about circularity from the word go," said Hall.
Key to its sustainability ethos, he added, was Pentatonic's life-time buy-back guarantee on all its furniture.
"However long the consumer wants them, we'll buy them back at the end of their life and turn them into something new because it's one material. It's almost like ice, so it's still water, we'll freeze it into ice and then at the end of life we'll just break it down to water and do something different with it."
Pentatonic's chairs - completely made from re-engineered consumer waste - start at 199 pounds (269 USD), while a set of four glasses made from old smartphone screens costs 40 pounds (54 USD).
Their partnership with Starbucks, starting with a sustainable redesign on its iconic 'Bean Chair', is the first of much collaboration that Pentatonic hopes to have in their efforts to turn trash into a usable commodity.
"We want to work with governments, we want to work with other businesses, we want to work with consumers obviously on a large scale because the only way we're going to solve the problems that we have is by working together and creating a movement and everyone getting involved," said Hall. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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