We did it! A 3D-printed table and a vase were created using grass clippings from the wild roadsides of the Netherlands. This is the first result of the collaboration between Herrejan Veenema, director and founder of Waardewenders, and Marc van der Heijden, director and founder of TRIBOO. Never before has it been possible to use locally sourced clippings from spent grasses and flowers to create a suitable compound for large-scale 3D printing of furniture.  

Together, the two organizations have developed a unique formula from this waste stream to create a circular material for printing furniture. The grass clippings are ground into fibers, transforming them into a valuable raw material. Combined with lactic acid, these fibers form the ingredients for a pellet suitable for the production of NeverEnding Furniture. At the end of their lifespan, this circular furniture can be ground up again and used as a raw material for printing other pieces of furniture. In this way, raw materials never become waste again, and the furniture becomes NeverEnding.  

The results of this collaboration will soon be available on TRIBOO’s digital furniture platform, NeverEnding Furniture. This platform will offer digital furniture designs that can be printed on demand and to perfection using standardized YIZUMI machines, logistics, and materials. This way, the furniture will be available to everyone at the touch of a button and produced in the Netherlands.

The partnership between Waardewenders and TRIBOO makes it possible to utilize local roadside grass not only ecologically but also economically. This makes sustainable roadside management more attractive to municipalities and provinces. The benefits are almost too numerous to list. In addition to roadside grass absorbing CO2 as it grows, that CO2 is also stored in the furniture. In this way, the circular design of government offices in the Netherlands can serve as a repository for raw materials and CO2. And the Dutch design furniture from NeverEnding Furniture tells everyone in the office the circular story of furniture in which waste streams are reused as new raw materials, from generation to generation to generation.

Would you like to get involved and make a real impact by reducing material use and CO2 emissions and promoting reuse? Would you like to actively contribute to a zero-waste society and the development of the circular economy by designing your circular work environment? Marc Van Der Heijden and Herrejan Veenema would be happy to visit you to discuss how you can put this into practice.