On May 29, Desso, a leading European carpet and sports
surfaces company won the 2012
Guardian Sustainable Business Award for the Waste and Recycling
category for its implementation of Cradle to Cradle® design in its
business strategy. It was up against two other shortlisted
companies BAM Nuttall and Coca-Cola Enterprises.
"This is a fantastic endorsement of all the hard work the
people at Desso have undergone to transform our business," says
Stef Kranendijk, CEO of Desso. "I am especially delighted because
the Guardian Sustainable Business Awards recognise entries that
have made a real impact and look for business models that can be
replicated. We have found that the Cradle to Cradle® strategy
boosts our profits and innovation but it also helps us deal with
the most pressing environmental challenges we face as a society.
And we hope it will be adopted by others, so that together we can
achieve scale in going beyond sustainability." "We are moving away
from the linear economy of 'take, make and dispose' towards the
circular economy," adds Kranendijk, "As estimated in a new report
from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation this represents an economic
opportunity of up to $630 billion per year in Europe or almost 4%
of the EU's annual GDP1)."
Since 2008, Desso has been embedding a Cradle to Cradle® strategy
into its business model, whereby it designs products for
disassembly and recycling. The aim of Cradle to Cradle® is to
redesign the way we make things so that our products consist
of positively defined2) materials which can be
recycled on an infinite basis.
In 2010, Desso received a Cradle to Cradle® Silver certificate for
an entire carpet tile product with its new carpet tile backing
Desso EcoBase®. Due to its innovative composition, Desso
EcoBase®'s polyolefin-based layer is fully recyclable in Desso's
own production process. Carpet tiles with Desso EcoBase®
backing have reached a level where up to 97% of the materials are
positively defined3).
Desso has also developed a TakeBack™ programme to retrieve used
carpets (as long as they don't contain PVC) and recycle the
materials. Desso's goal is that by 2020 all its products will be
designed according to Cradle to Cradle® principles and a
large proportion of the energy consumed will be renewable.
Stef Kranendijk will be talking about the company's sustainability
strategy at the Green Corporate Energy Conference in London on June
27th where he will be interviewed by the environmentalist and
author John Elkington4).
1) The report,
Towards the Circular Economy: Economic and business rationale for
an accelerated transition was launched in January 2012 by Dame
Ellen MacArthur, the founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation at
the WEF summit in Davos. Stef Kranendijk, CEO of Desso was one of
the speakers at this launch event. A full version of the report is
available at: http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/
2) Positively defined = all ingredients have been
assessed as either Green (optimal) or Yellow (tolerable) according
to the Cradle to Cradle® assessment criteria.
3) See
footnote 2
4) http://www.greencorporateenergy.com/2012/