Astronomical amounts of archives are destroyed every year. Confidential information and valuable agreements stored on paper. Kilometers of documents that no longer need to be stored are transformed, once the retention period has expired, into small shreds that become worth less and less. They eventually end up in the water as toilet paper and cellulose waste, clogging up the filters of the Dutch water boards.

Wouldn't it be nice if these natural cellulose fibers could be upcycled so that the value is increased and preserved for a long time. Wouldn't it be nice if you could turn them into high quality healthy and circular products that could be used functionally in an office and as a visual expression of the circular economy and waste free society becomes visible to everyone. Wouldn't it be nice if we no longer turned these raw materials into waste and the CO2 was stored in the furniture that could later be used again to make other furniture.

I AM MADE OF OLD INSURANCE POLICIES

At Nationale Nederlanden's NN Workspace 2020 project, this is exactly the mindset, innovation and decisiveness that is being sought. At NN, they think about this very differently and make different decisions. With 0% waste, 100% circular and the lowest possible shadow price as starting points, TRIBOO, ECOR, Iron Mountain and Veolia transformed 50 kilos of old insurance policies from the archives of NN into healthy and circular furniture panels. Per panel, about 3 kilos of their own waste was used.    

CREATED A WORKING ENVIRONMENT TO MAKE EVERY EMPLOYEE FEEL GOOD

NN Workspace 2020 is the project to transform the housing of Nationale Nederlanden into a place where excellent service is provided to customers and where employees work together on the future of the company. A working environment created to make every employee feel good. The project involves a total of approximately 50,000 m2 and is being carried out in the iconic buildings Delftse Poort in Rotterdam and Haagse Poort in The Hague.

EDUCATIONAL AND FUN TO TURN YOUR OWN WASTE INTO A PRODUCT

How your business operations can contribute to reducing waste and CO2 emissions is easier said than done. In this way we can see step by step how our own waste is transformed into valuable furniture panels, says Peter Jansen, Portfolio Manager Workspace Management at Nationale Nederlanden. We are now all going to think about what we want to make of the panels, a table, wall panel or signing, there are all kinds of great applications.

TOGETHER WE CHANGE THE WORLD FASTER

TRIBOO, ECOR, Iron Mountain and Veolia joined us in closing the raw materials loop and were thus able to test on a small scale whether this innovation works for us. Based on these insights, we can investigate further possibilities. In the NN workspace 2020 project, parties who are not normally linked to each other by profession joined forces in a new value chain in which raw materials are not lost and turn into waste, according to Peter Jansen.