Material Rescue
Revive Reuse Reclaim
Date: 03.02.2025
Still useful
Created as a way to keep quality materials in circulation, Material Rescue is much more than just a takeback service. It's about realising the inherent potential of materials and working with clients, designers and makers to create opportunities to extend the lifecycle. Beyond reclaiming old offcuts, samples, surfaces or packaging, we can also take back fabricated furniture, such as servery areas, till points, signage, retail displays, tables or worktops - or repair and refresh the surfaces in situ, extending the lifecycle and keeping the surfaces in better use, for longer.
“A typical retail and commercial fit-out is renovated every 5-7 years, resulting in thousands of tonnes of perfectly usable materials being sent to landfill.” –ARUP
Revive
Even when quality materials are regularly maintained, surfaces can wear out with age and use. There's no need to replace them too soon, they can often be repaired, renewed and restored to keep them looking better for longer. A refresh can be done as a one-off or scheduled as part of your regular quarterly, semi-annual, annual or on a 2 to 5 year maintenance schedule. Specialists can attend out of hours or over weekends to help work around retail footfall or workspace, and can make repairs to small cracks, deep scratches and refurb the surfaces to look nearly-new.
“Although a large number of building elements are reusable, only 1% are reused after their first application. Instead they are recycled by crushing or melting, or disposed of.” –FCRBE
Reuse
Use reclaimed off cuts from our Material Rescue shop and give them new purpose as coasters, signage, knife handles, coat hooks, chopping boards, sink covers and more. Old skate ramp surfaces reclaimed from back garden ramps and public parks take on a look like weathered steel, retaining strength and beauty for interior fit outs, cladding and displays. Damaged surfaces can take on new dimension with Shaped, or old restaurant tables take on new meaning in a school or community space.
Reclaim
Send us your old samples, offcuts, worktops, displays, pallets or packaging. Book a takeback to rescue unwanted excess and used surfaces. We'll help you with the logistics and try to give everything a second or third application before recycling.
With any takeback, we sort through the materials for reuse or recycling. Regardless of where the material ends up, for every kilo returned, we'll give 50p directly to charity. We have identified non-for-profits and charities well-aligned to advancing social and environmental impact within the built environment. Find out more about their work and donate directly or book a takeback to amplify your impact.
And, start the next
With any rescue we can develop a report based on the project takeback, using carbon and material passport data from the first use through to refurb, reuse or recycling. We can feed deconstruction information back to design teams to design-in circularity, making reuse and recycling easier on future projects. This works well for planning large retrofits, rebrands or changes in international store, hospitality and hotel design where a design lifecycle is phased over many years, improving the transparency and reporting Scope III footprint, recycling and waste data.
