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Polish designer Tomek Rygalik has launched Loope – a recycled plastic furniture brand that allows customers to return used products when they are no longer needed, so they can be turned into a different piece of furniture free of charge.
Loop’s pieces are made from leftover materials sourced from a rotational moulding factory that produces items such as play equipment, kayaks and flower pots.
Its furniture is produced using the factory’s existing rotational moulding equipment and recycled polyethylene, which is durable, weather-resistant and can be recycled multiple times.
This has allowed the brand to create a closed-loop system for collecting, recycling, remoulding and distributing, all under one roof.
By controlling the production process, Loope ensures the plastic remains uncontaminated and retains its key properties of quality and durability over several generations of use.
Warsaw-based Rygalik claims that this “shapeshifting” process can fight plastic pollution and offer a more sustainable alternative to our typical take-make-waste consumption patterns.
“The combination of modern rotomoulding technology with a desire to build a better world allowed us to create furniture that responds to the challenges of today,” he said.
“By purchasing Loope furniture, you can buy a chair, but with time you can return it to us, and transform it into a table,” the designer added. “It is all about finding new uses with that same source material.”
The project began when Rygalik was approached about designing a collection of outdoor furniture. Instead, he saw an opportunity to develop a new brand from the ground up.
Loope offers five product ranges with simple, timeless forms designed to ensure the durability and longevity of the products.
Among them is Rounder, a versatile system comprising pillars of varying heights that can combine with tabletops or seats. A similar approach is used for the Fat Table, which combines pillar-shaped legs with slender tabletops made from HPL plastic.
Armstrong is a series of robust armchairs, benches and tables with a distinctive rim that lends the pieces a lightweight aesthetic, while the Allin chair combines a shell seat with a supporting frame in metal, wood or aluminium.
The final collection is an L-shaped seating system for public spaces called OneL that integrates functions including a bench, armchair and flowerpot.
Rygalik told Dezeen that Loope’s launch at Milan design week prompted an enthusiastic response from clients, who recognised the potential for reimagining architectural spaces over time by swapping out furniture for free.
While no products have yet been returned, the system is in place and technical tests have been carried out to ensure items can be reprocessed into any currently available product, the designer explained.
“For too long, sustainability in furniture has been more of a narrative than a real shift,” said Rygalik, who has been working in the design industry for 20 years.
“That’s why we chose a different path: to take radical action first, and only then build precise solutions and ways of communicating them.”
Alongside his design work, Rygalik is a professor of furniture design at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland.
He has invited students there to develop ideas for the next generation of circular products, with the results set to be presented during the 3 Days of Fesign festival in Copenhagen in June.
Other furniture makers trialling take-back schemes to reduce waste include Benchmark, Arper and Norwegian start-up Minus, which offers carbon-negative furniture on a subscription basis.
The post Unwanted furniture turned into new items at no extra cost with Loope take-back scheme appeared first on Dezeen.
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