Upcycling rubber cork

Recycling is old news: KLINGER Denkmark engages in a promising new collaboration that puts an end to a resource-heavy process.

Customers will be pleased, and possibly confused, to hear that KLINGER Denmark has gotten into the matchmaking business – waste matchmaking, to be precise. The Danish KLINGER subsidiary has joined with The Upcycl in order to find industry partners who can use KLINGER waste materials for design and development projects. This new agreement will allow KLINGER to increase sustainability efforts by not only recycling waste, but also by actively seeking alternate uses for it that bypass the resource-heavy recycling process.

The potential of gasket waste materials

Niels Højensgaard, Production Team Manager for KLINGER Denmark, was searching for a way to recycle waste materials from KLINGER Denkmark, but no companies were willing to take it. His team did some research and stumbled across The Upcycl, who was eager to open a dialogue. CEO Rikke Ullersted quickly found potential in the gasket waste materials, particularly the rubber cork. They found a company that sells products for kindergartens, where they use the rubber cork on top of wooden chairs to dampen acoustics and provide grip. Rikke’s bright smile paints a mental picture as she shares an anecdote: “When the kids are in their winter clothes, you know, a snowsuit, sometimes they slide off the chairs, because the fabric is slippery. So, now they can actually stay on the chairs with this rubber cork.”

The look and feel of waste material

Niels recognizes that keeping an open forum is the best way to encourage further collaboration. As he explains, designers often need to see the materials in person in order to understand their potential uses, so he invites them to KLINGER on site, to examine the scrap, hands on:

Rikke agrees, adding, “We work with showrooms now. We didn’t in the beginning, but we realized that to be able to implement materials, it has to be felt, it has to be seen. You cannot do it digitally.”

Materials first

Despite the successful collaboration between KLINGER Denmark and The Upcycl, there is still more work to be done. While the waste KLINGER provides has found steady use, Rikke believes there are additional markets to be considered. Potential uses for KLINGER gasket waste such as kitchen installations and all-weather flooring look promising, but require comprehensive testing to ensure food safety, determine chemical compatibility, and address environmental factors. As Rikke points out, caution is the group’s priority:

For one final success in matchmaking, Rikke has convinced Niels to allow student visitors to KLINGER as well. They both believe that exposing design and architecture students to the waste matchmaking process early in their careers can only benefit the sustainability industry in the long term. As Niels points out, “We are all stronger now than we were when we started working together.”

New paths and a look beyond the horizon

Finding further markets will allow KLINGER Denmark to expand sustainability efforts, while also allowing other companies to develop their own products in ways they had not previously anticipated. This is the value of The Upcycl’s matchmaking: specialists from a variety of disciplines approach materials with fresh eyes, often brainstorming material uses that entrenched experts would not have thought of on their own. “What KLINGER sees as a resource, or as a potential material, can be prohibited in other areas, like for the semiconductor industry or the furniture industry. They look at materials in totally different ways, so you have to start with the materials,” Rikke says. This materials-first approach is catching on, even trickling from business down to university, affecting the way design is taught to students.

For one final success in matchmaking, Rikke has convinced Niels to allow student visitors to KLINGER as well. They both believe that exposing design and architecture students to the waste matchmaking process early in their careers can only benefit the sustainability industry in the long term. As Niels points out, “We are all stronger now than we were when we started working together.”

The woman behind The Upcycl

Rikke Ullersted, founder and CEO of The Upcycl, began her journey as a partner at a design agency. As her clients grew more eco-conscious, the demand for sustainable project materials increased year over year. Sourcing and quality challenges led her to establish The Upcycl to meet those needs at a global level. While the concept of reusing materials may sound simple to the layman, it actually requires multiple layers of complicated efforts to remain viable. As Rikke explains, clients need their source materials to maintain uniform characteristics and availability, so extensive background work is required before The Upcycl can bring products to market. “The companies who adopt the materials, they have to experiment, they have to prototype. It might take a whole year before a product reaches the shops, and there’s a lot of testing to run before you actually hit a flow of material. It has to be uniform, and it has to be continuous.” Because individual companies can vary with their production output, crowdsourcing waste from multiple locations allows the Upcycl to match manufacturers with developers and provide a steady flow of source materials.