Furniture maker Cooloo from Wanssum has been awarded the first Limburg circular innovation prize.
The company makes furniture from waste products and can always refurbish the same furniture. This allows the furniture to get a new look if, for example, the seat is worn out. This is done from old tennis balls or wine corks, among other things.
Behavioral change
The prize is an initiative of the Limburg Employers’ Association (LWV), the Province of Limburg, Rabobank and LIOF. The intention is to help the business community with – and to stimulate – circular production. That mainly means reusing things. “Yeah, but it’s much more than that,” Cooloo’s Ricco Fiorito says.
The commercial circular director says that this also involves a change in consumer behaviour. “Should we buy as much as we buy now? Is it normal that you use something once and throw it away? Consumers should also contribute to sustainability with their behavior.”
Second Life
According to Cooloo, 60 percent of our furniture comes from China and 90 percent ends up in landfills. “We make furniture that can be reused. And we also work with discarded furniture that we give a second life. When the upholstery is worn, we remove it completely and make a new one, so you can also change color or design. Every year five million tennis balls are thrown away alone, you can do all kinds of things with that.”
Audience Award
There is also a public award, which goes to the Looop company in Venlo. Looop processes residues from, among other things, the food industry into full-fledged raw materials for the food chain, ingredients for animal feed and sustainable energy sources. “This creates less waste and fewer polluting emissions, generates green energy and contributes to healthy circular agriculture,” the company writes on its website. “And eventually more sustainable products will be available to consumers.”
Opportunities Limburg
According to jury member and circularity director of Brightlands Chemelot Lia Voermans, there are great opportunities for the Limburg economy. “We are centrally located in an international region with millions of households. You can use that waste to build a new circular economy. Limburg should make use of that and this new prize is also to give it more publicity. We stand by it. at the moment with education and companies at Chemelot, for example. But there is much more that can be done.”