Dust to Tile: Kohler's Waste Lab Transforms Industrial Waste
Monday 29 October 2018, 8:17PM
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Kohler has been crafting solutions to repurpose industrial waste on a large scale. Ceramic artist Theresa Millard started working at Kohler in 1988 supervising the Artist Editions production team. After moving over to industrial design, she travelled to Costa Rica in 2005 to study biomimicry, an approach that draws inspiration from nature.
Millard’s realisation coincided with a time when the company was asking bigger questions about sustainability. She joined Kohler’s cross-functional environmental leadership team in 2007, and began focusing on sustainability full-time for the company around 2011.
She is now the project manager for Kohler’s new Waste Lab, where she heads up sustainability and stewardship with a team that includes her husband, technical designer Jim Neiman. The team is developing its first high-end tile product, expected to go on the market soon.
Kohler is committed to NetZero by 2035 in terms of greenhouse emissions and solid waste going to landfills. To fulfill this promise of reducing and eliminating them, they are constantly thinking of new ways to approach this challenge. As a large manufacturer solid waste is a by-product of factory processes.
Born out of their employee initiative ‘Innovation for Good’, the idea of looking at industrial waste in a new way and as raw material emerged in October 2013. The team developed solutions to keep clean manufacturing waste out of landfills, make it valuable again, and turn it into innovative products.
Since then, Theresa Millard and her team have experimented and tested ways of transforming how people look at waste. At the Kohler Waste Lab, they are finding environmentally sustainable solutions and contributing to the circular economy by imitating nature and recycling, reusing and repurposing factory by-products.
The Waste Lab turns foundry dust, spent sand, green cull from the pottery, and enamel powder into decorative kitchen and bathroom tiles. The Waste Lab located in the glass production building in a disused lab facility. It is an innovative, cross-discipline team of engineers, industrial designers, waste specialists, and artists who create something new, valuable and worthwhile with potential landfill material and with equipment that is no longer in use in the production plants. Millard knows that with a craftsman’s eye and the understanding of composition and characteristics, waste can be repurposed as raw material for new, precious products that bring joy and a good feeling to the customers.
For more information on shower doors, Kohler toilet, bathroom vanities, freestanding baths NZ and more, visit https://kohler.co.nz/
Reference: https://www.environmentalleader.com/2018/03/kohler-waste-lab/