Auping & Circle Economy: Cooperation is Key
Guest blog by Auping
Sustainability has always been in Auping’s DNA. Founded in 1888, sustainability to us was defined by making high-quality durable beds with a lifelong guarantee. Founder, Johannes Auping, expresses the core value as, “making products in a fair balance between durability, quality and reasonable prices.”
In recent years we’ve seen that beds and furniture are becoming more trend based. Our customers do not buy a new bed because it is at the end of its functional lifetime, but they buy a new bed because it is out of fashion. The same goes for many consumer products. Product lifetimes are decreasing as new trends, updates and innovations come up ever quicker.
We’ve decided to integrate a Circular Economy philosophy to adapt to these new circumstances, while still making use of our competitive advantage — making high-quality durable products. Over the last few years, we have been a company in transition. We want to embrace a business model where products will be returned to us after their usage period, so we can ensure all materials and components are reused or properly recycled. We’re convinced that in the end, this will help us to serve our customers in the most effective and efficient way.
We’ve experienced that a transition like this brings risks. On one hand, future benefits are unclear because there are no clear one-to-one examples. On the other hand, we feel a responsibility for the 130-year heritage of our company. Therefore, it is key to have a network of like-minded partners that can inspire and help you take on the different challenges with greater confidence. That is what Circle Economy brings to us.
Recently we’ve focused on textiles more specifically by joining the Circle Fashion Tool and Fibersort project from the Circle Textiles Programme. As a beds and mattresses manufacturer, we use textiles in mattresses, box springs and bed sheets. Recycling textiles provides us with a challenge on its own.
We adapt our product assortment to meet the different tastes of our customers. For instance, we apply a wide variety of upholstery textiles on our box springs, these come in different colours and are made from different yarn compositions. This is a challenge because the more diverse the input, the less efficient recycling is. The Fibersort project will bring a solution to that issue providing both effective and efficient way of sorting different fibre compositions.
With the Circle Fashion Tool, we hope to find a solution to another issue for recycling textiles. The textiles we use for our mattress ticking, for instance, are much less diverse and cut-offs come in much higher volumes. Still, we cannot easily recycle them in a high-value way. This is because these textiles are optimized for ventilation and comfort and not designed to be recycled. Joining the Circle Fashion Tool project will give us insights to re-engineer the textiles we use to be more appropriate for recycling and find partners that can assist us with recycling.
