Circularity in the wood furniture industry: the INFURI journey has ended
INFURI, the initiative that aims to make the wood furniture industry more circular, held its final conference was held at the end of May.
Workshop held by Materially within Milano Circolare, an initiative of the municipality of Milan.
Let’s summarize briefly: INFURI stands for “INnovation in the FUrniture Industry in the era of circular economy” and is a collaboration between various European organizations – research centers and universities, training institutions, as well as companies in the furniture sector – which have teamed up to identify and fill the gaps of knowledge related to sustainability and to prepare the necessary tools to implement the circular economy in the wood-furniture sector.
For Materially, and all the consortium partners, the final conference held on 11 May at Designtech certainly represents the most significant moment of the project: it gave the opportunity to illustrate the work carried out in 2 and a half years of collaboration, but above all it was an opportunity for exchange between the various stakeholders in the wood-furniture supply chain.
INFURI Final Conference Speaker Panel: (from left) Maria Porro, Maggie Feng, Davide Barzaghi, Anna Pellizzari
We are very proud to have had representatives of all INFURI stakeholders actively participating in event: small and medium-sized enterprises, training and research institutions, product development and design who have confronted each other in a round table open to both a general and specialized audience, generating a stimulating conversation and a series of reflections among the speakers and attendees.
Among the speakers Maria Porro with her triple role – marketing and communication director of Porro S.p.A, President of Assarredo with responsibility for Sustainability, President of Salone del Mobile.Milano – Davide Barzaghi co-founder and designer of the Italian SME Biosofa, Maggie Feng CEO of Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences and Anna Pellizzari Executive Director of Materially.
Did you miss the conversation or want to review some passages? Join the INFURI network without any commitment and get the video recording by registering at this link: INFURI Multi-actor circular network.
Presentation of the Circular Procurement Guidelines to students of Politecnico di Milano.
The activities of the initiative financed with European funds officially ended on May 31st, and now the various outputs are available on the project website. In addition to the scientific article “Circularity Matters: Gaps, Limits and Constraints in the EU Furniture Industry” and a self-diagnosis tool to measure the circularity of the company’s actions (both outputs part of chapter IO1), there are also the links available to the open access course “Managing a Furniture Company in the Era of Circular Economy” (chapter IO2 – MOOC). In addition, the translations into all consortium languages are available of the Book of Lectures which collects some interesting success stories (chapter IO3), as well as the collection of case studies and the glossary (chapter IO5), useful for gaining an understanding of the most relevant terms on the subject. All the material is collected on this web page www.infuri.org/results, including the link to the Circular Procurement Guidelines for Office Furniture implemented by Materially and made available in open access mode on the Miroverse platform.
The Circular Procurement Guidelines freely accessible online: https://miro.com/miroverse/circular-procurement-guidelines/
Recently, the last newsletter of the project was released, summarizing the activities of all project partners, and those of the lead partner Wittenborg University in particular. For Materially, the path taken thanks to the INFURI initiative has allowed us to explore new tools, increase the skills of our team, and strengthen existing synergies and relations with the local and national wood-furniture sector.