By Michael Holder for BusinessGreen
Upcyclers turn old desks, chairs, and carpets into new office furniture, saving money and delivering environmental benefits.
Making sure products and materials can be used again – rather than going to waste – is good for for both businesses and the environment. That is the premise that underpins the concept of the “circular economy”, an emerging sector the government estimates could deliver £23-billionn a year of benefits to UK businesses if resources were used more efficiently.
For example, one third of our office furniture – 300 tonnes per day – ends up in landfill.
Firms such as Rype Office create sustainable furniture from items that would otherwise get thrown away and is employing ‘upcyclers’ across its growing business to help turn the circular economy vision into a reality.
Sprout, a Danish firm based in Taastrup, is quickly growing success outside of Denmark. The company’s sustainable pencils that turn into plants and vegetables recently caught the attention of the influential US television programme The Today Show, opening the product up to a much wider market.
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Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Senzeni Zokwana has called on forestry partners to give life to a broad national greening project as a means of ensuring a brighter future for children.
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Large industrial businesses abuse South Africa’s unemployment crisis to manipulate government when it comes to non-compliance with environmental laws, the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) claims.
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Ambit’s innovative solar-powered classroom is poised to provide “off-grid” electricity and connectivity to rural classrooms and help teachers overcome the pitfalls of load-shedding. It not only harnesses the continent’s most abundant resource, the sun, but can also provide power for the rest of the school.
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Shareholders are pressuring management to “identify risks associated with climate change, rein in greenhouse gases, or assess methane emissions”.
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Retroviral Digital Communications has moved into new offices – but in typical Retroviral style, there’s nothing ordinary about the agency’s new space: the building is the first small commercially viable building in South Africa to achieve a Six Green Star SA rating from the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA).
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The Western Cape government’s GreenCape sector development agency is finalising work on an application to have the Atlantis industrial area designated as a green-technology (greentech) special economic zone (SEZ).
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Are South African businesses and municipalities ready to make sustainable waste management decisions?
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Toyota is offering a fascinating glimpse into the clean city of as it brings nimble, zero-emission motoring to Europe’s crowded city centres with a fleet of its i-ROAD and COMS ultra-compact electric vehicles.
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