Astronomical amounts of archive are destroyed every year. Confidential information and valuable agreements stored on paper. Kilometres of documents that no longer need to be kept are transformed, once the retention period has expired, into small shreds that become worth less and less. To eventually end up as toilet paper in the water and as cellulose waste to clog the filters of the Dutch water boards. Wouldn't it be nice if these natural cellulose fibres could be upcycled to increase their value and preserve them 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 manifestation of the circular economy and waste-free society become 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 to make other furniture?

I AM MADE OF 50 KILOS OF OLD INSURANCE POLICIES

In the NN Workspace 2020 project of Nationale Nederlanden, this is exactly the mindset, innovation and decisiveness that is being sought. At NN, they think and decide very differently. 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 NN's archives into healthy and circular furniture panels. Per panel, about 50 kilos of 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. This way we can see step by step from practice how our own waste is transformed into valuable furniture panels, says Peter Jansen, Portfolio Manager Workspace Management at Nationale Nederlanden. We are now all thinking about what we want to make from the panels, a table, wall panel or signing, and there are all sorts 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.