DENMARK – Dairy firm Arla Foods has collaborated with furniture manufacturer HOLMRIS B8 and Danish furniture designer Mater to convert surplus milk cartons into chairs.
In a LinkedIn post, Arla Foods says that the chair is made from a blend of surplus plastic from its milk carton production mixed with coffee shell waste – a byproduct from the coffee roasting industry.
The partnership was initiated by Holmris B8, which met Arla’s need for responsible solutions in their furniture selection by facilitating the meeting between Arla and Mater.
Arla says that the initiative will help convert around 500 kg of surplus plastic from its Slagelse Dairy returns to its offices in Denmark and Germany as 350 designer chairs.
According to Mater, the Arla edition of the Conscious Chair is an excellent example of how it enjoys working with corporations and finding ways to transform their waste streams or excess production into furniture that can be used for their own premises.
The Conscious Chair is a relaunch of Børge Mogensen’s and Esben Klint’s chair BM3162 from 1958.
“The relaunched edition is made with a seat and back of Matek, our circular waste material,” notes Mater in a LinkedIn post.
“For the Arla edition, the Matek blend consists of excess plastic from the production of milk cartons mixed with coffee shell waste – a byproduct from the coffee roasting industry.”
This new collaboration comes barely a week after Arla Foods in partnership with Sudpack announced an initiative to explore new methods to recycle plastic waste.
At its Rødkærsbro dairy in Denmark, where Arla produces mozzarella, the company uses a specially designed plastic film to mature the cheese over two weeks.
The two companies are planning to use the ‘pyrolysis’ recycling process to keep the plastic film looped within the recycling process, rather than simply sending the used pack to be incinerated.
The pyrolysis process converts plastic waste into oil by exposing it to very high temperatures in a controlled environment.
Arla Foods lead packaging development manager Grane Maaløe said: “Instead of sending our plastic films to incineration, resulting in a one-off energy gain, we recycle them and use the recycled material to create new packaging thus reducing the carbon footprint as well as the need for virgin fossil feedstock.
“It might sound obvious but in the complex world of recycling this is an exciting step in our journey towards fully circular packaging.”
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