Sustainable Plastic Office Furniture

在英国，每年有12.5万吨办公家具被填埋/能源回收。这包括大量的持久性塑料废物。线性浪费循环的一个关键驱动因素是塑料部件的表面磨损和撕裂将物品送往垃圾填埋场，即塑料椅子/桌面背面的一个划痕目前确保它永远不会有第二次生命。据我们所知，没有技术能够将塑料损坏修复为新的状态，因为：1.从历史上看，家具行业一直专注于销售更多由原始材料制成的产品，因此没有对维修进行研究。原生资源历来价格低廉，其环境影响并未计入成本。由于英国脱欧、原材料成本增加和碳成本内部化，这种情况正在发生变化。因此，更昂贵和/或耗时的维修现在是经济可行的。3.制造业依赖于最大限度地减少变异和创造可复制的流程。塑料部件可能损坏的范围对传统制造系统提出了挑战4。塑料是具有挑战性的材料，以重新露面。有各种各样的塑料配方和添加剂，使维修困难。5.复制是很困难的。例如，塑胶模具内的电火花腐蚀饰面在维修时很难复制。我们修订后的项目范围将设计和开发技术和程序，以工业化地为办公室家具重铺塑胶表面。第一批重铺的部件将是工作椅靠背、底座、食堂椅模制座椅和三聚氰胺涂层书桌/桌面。这是办公家具行业塑料损坏导致浪费量最大的三种产品。

In the UK 125,000 tonnes of office furniture goes to landfill/energy recovery per year. This includes large volumes of persistent plastic waste.A key driver of the linear wasteful cycle is that superficial wear and tear for plastic components consigns an item to landfill i.e. one scratch in the back of a plastic chair/desk top currently ensures that it will never have a second life.There are, to our knowledge, no technologies available that are capable of repairing plastic damage to as-new condition because:1. Historically, the furniture industry has been focussed on selling more products made from virgin materials, so no research has been done into repair.2. Virgin resources have historically been inexpensive, with their environmental impacts not costed in. This is now changing due to Brexit, raw material cost increases and carbon cost internalisation. Therefore more expensive and/or time-consuming repairs are now economically viable.3. Manufacturing relies on minimising variation and creating replicable processes. The range of possible damage to plastic components challenges conventional manufacturing systems4. Plastics are challenging materials to resurface. There is a wide range of plastic formulations and additives that make repairs difficult.5. Finishes are difficult to replicate. For example, spark erosion finishes within plastic moulds are difficult to copy during a repairOur revised project scope will design and develop the technologies and processes to industrialise plastic resurfacing for office furniture.The first examples components to resurface will be task chair backs, bases, canteen chair moulded seats and melamine coated desk/table tops. These are the three products where plastic damage results in the greatest amounts of waste in the office furniture sector.