Sustainability at Orangebox
Acknowledging our impact.
We recognise that natural resources and systems are both declining at an untenable rate, and we believe a radical rethink is necessary to address climate change and biodiversity loss.
As a manufacturing company, we know that our own long-term success depends on using sustainable materials and balancing economic and environmental outcomes.
While the transition to significant de-carbonisation can’t happen overnight, it is a key aim for our business, and more than any other topic, is determining our direction of travel for the coming decade.
The Orangebox Approach:
It’s all in the design.
Our process
Tools like the Greenhouse Gas Protocol show us that while operational emissions matter, the materials we use and how long our products last have a far greater impact on our footprint overall.
As a result, all Orangebox’s new product developments share the same ambition; to gain the most design-value and utility from the least amount of material. The materials we do use are chosen with low impact in mind, and we design for reuse and remanufacturing from the very start.
In line with a key aim of the Circular Economy; we want to keep the materials invested in our products, at their highest quality, for the longest time possible. An example of this is our Wool Circle textile made from our wool fabric scrap.
Environmentally-led design, always.
Our Sustainable Design Policy acts a clear guide for our internal design-team.
We set environmental performance goals for new products and regular environmental reviews are built into our New Product Development process.
We use footprinting tools to compare the relative impacts of concept designs early-on in their development, not just as a reporting tool once the product is launched. We also think about wear & tear upfront, and design for easy servicing and facilitating future upgrades.
And of course, we do our best to provide clear and transparent information about the materials we use, where they come from, and how they should be dealt with at end of life.
Materials Matter.
Natural vs Synthetic
One of our big challenges as a manufacturer is that designing for longevity can often mean using synthetic, rather than natural materials. We’re always conscious of making the best overall choice and where we do use synthetic materials, technical polymers for example, we’ll always specify lower-impact recycled grades wherever we can.
In every case, material health is imperative to us too, and we go to great lengths to identify and evaluate the safety of every chemical ingredient that may be present. These can be within the materials themselves (additives in polymers to make them UV resistant for example) or within surface treatments like powder coatings or lacquers.
We also take into consideration the amount of energy required to convert a raw material into a finished component, as natural materials tend to require a lot less in comparison to processes like injection moulding or die-casting.
Materials we use.
What we’ve done:
Designing for
Sustainability – in action
Recur – reducing complexity and part count.
Orangebox’s Do chair is a tough act to follow but Recur takes many of the design ideas embedded within Do and takes them another step further.
Recur is both lighter and simpler, but just as resilient. It uses 30% fewer fixings and has only 26 key components.
Striving to reduce part count and complexity every time we work on a new development means more utility from less materials, and almost always results in a lower carbon footprint too.
Campers & Dens – operational energy efficiency.
With many of our products now consuming energy in use, it’s really important that we make every effort to maximise energy efficiency without compromising on functionality.
All our modular acoustic room pods have built in lighting and ventilation systems that provide the users with working environment that’s comfortable & productive.
The pods in our Campers & Dens range deliver a minimum of 10 air changes per hour from ultra-low energy fans and our CD05 pod has a nominal energy consumption in use of just 27W (only 2W when the pod is unoccupied).