Van de Sant – Comfortable sustainable furniture

Van de Sant produces design furniture from recycled plastic gathered from land and oceans. This contributes to mitigation of deforestation, reduction of plastic waste in the world oceans and creates local jobs. Van de Sant furniture is fully circular.

Every piece of furniture can be reprocessed into raw materials and re-manufactured into new design furniture. Every furniture piece contains approx 25 kg plastic waste, which reduces 50 kg CO2 emissions, saves 20 kg wood and 8000 liter water.

Sustainability gets more and more popular

Designing with sustainability in mind was not the norm. The norm was to design things to make our life easier, however this is cause of many problems. Over the past years interest in sustainable products has increased.

Yet as sustainability gets more and more popular, the traditional furniture industry still uses more than two billion trees annually to make its products; trees are cut legally and illegally. For the most part, supply chains today can be characterized as linear: materials are consumed then products are manufactured, distributed and sold, and used until they are disposed of at the product’s end-of-life stage. However, amidst debilitating environmental pressures – caused in part by the unsustainable use of raw materials – there is a growing trend towards a circular economy in which resources are kept in use for as long as possible and then reused at the end-of-life stage.

Recycled plastic instead of deforestation

A desire to stop deforestation and the frustration with plastic pollution prompted Robert Milder to start experimenting with furniture frames made from recycled plastic. After looking at strengths, sizes and colors, his designer team came up with a collection of in- and outdoor designer furniture, which was greatly appreciated by the corporate industry, hospitality and events sectors, as well as by individuals.

Van de Sant hopes that innovative production processes will shake up the furniture industry. Trees will no longer be sacrificed for furniture frames. Instead ocean-bound plastics will be used in furniture frames and will be allocated for upholstery fabric. And there will be no end of life cycle, since products can be fully circular.

www.vandesant.com