Leading carpets and sport pitches company Desso has been shortlisted for
the prestigious BusinessGreen Leaders Awards 2015 for the second year in a row.
A Tarkett company, Desso has been shortlisted in the Waste and Recycling
category.
The BusinessGreen Leaders Awards 2015 is organised by BusinessGreen.com,
the leading UK information source for the green economy. In its fifth year,
the BusinessGreen Leaders Awards celebrates leading businesses,
executives, entrepreneurs, investors and campaigners from across the green
economy, as they drive innovative and sustainable business models and
technologies.
Desso has showcased its innovative development of a new Cradle to
Cradle material stream to support its ongoing commitment to the circular
economy.
Desso collaborated with local water companies to find a more sustainable
alternative to purchasing calcium carbonate, a material used as a stabiliser in
its carpet tiles. Calcium carbonate is produced as a residue during water softening
processes; the challenge was to develop a way to prepare this material in the
right form for Desso’s processes.
Desso partnered with Restoffenunie, a collective shared service centre
of the Dutch Water Supply Companies to find an innovative way to upcycle
reengineered calcium carbonate into Desso’s carpet tiles. By using the residual
stream of calcium carbonate from local water producers, Desso no longer needed
to source the material from mining companies in France.
Desso Managing Director Roland Jonkhoff commented that their commitment
to developing healthy Cradle to Cradle material streams demonstrates the
power of cross-industry collaboration and innovation in paving the way for
better and more sustainable supply chains and products.
Desso is the first carpet company in the world to use upcycled calcium
carbonate and expects to eventually draw as much as 20,000 tonnes of chalk from
this source per year.
Finalists for the BusinessGreen Leaders awards will be announced on
1st July in London.
