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Route 2030: Rewind event carpet picked up by popular Belgian TV station VTM

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B.I.G. is on course to achieve a zero environmental footprint by 2030. That is right, zero. To make this journey more tangible, we would like to offer you a passenger’s seat from which you will be able to really get up close and immerse yourself in our various sustainability projects. In this edition: Rewind as a sustainable carpet solution for events and trade shows.

Our commitment within B.I.G. to create circular products is best reflected in our current product portfolio through our event carpet, Rewind. Even the outside world looks with admiration at this impressive feat of innovation!

It's no coincidence that Rewind was at the center of the most recent episode of the Belgian television program 'Doe Maar Duurzaam' ('Just Do Sustainable'). 'Doe Maar Duurzaam' is a program commissioned by VTM, one of Belgium's largest television stations. The program focuses on innovations by Belgian companies that contribute to a sustainable future in various ways. So, of course, our Rewind carpet couldn't be missed!

Our colleagues Bénédicte Lobel, Business Development Manager, and Duchan Laplace, Innovation Project Manager, explained how Rewind contributes to the sustainability of events. Then they took the camera crew through the production process of Rewind!

route 2030 doe maar duurzaam

100% Recyclable

"During filming, we tried to frame how Rewind is made," says Bénédicte Lobel, Business Development Manager. "And how a product comes into existence, of course, starts in the conceptual phase. With our ‘Design for Circularity’ principle in mind, the entire production process was set up to produce a 100% sustainable event carpet.”

“In concrete terms, this means that no latex is used and that the carpet is made up of only one ingredient, making it a mono-material. As a result, it is 100% and sustainably recyclable into a new high-quality raw material that can be used for the production of products such as chairs and automotive parts", explains Bénédicte.

A textbook example of upcycling

Because Rewind is 100% latex-free, it radically reduces energy consumption and carbon emissions. And water? No more water is used in the production process. Solutions like these are a significant step forward in reducing the ecological footprint. "We win twice. On the one hand, we achieve a lower ecological footprint during the production process, and on the other hand, we ensure that the waste mountain does not become even bigger. In the past, this type of carpet was inevitably destined for a landfill or incinerator”, says Duchan Laplace, Innovation Project Manager. “In addition to sustainable end-of-life processing, we give polypropylene a second life as a high-quality product with a long lifespan. This is textbook upcycling and fully fits within our philosophy of a circular economy."

Specialized recycling point

The complexity of recycling is currently still being handled by an external party. After an event or trade show, the carpet is collected and taken to a specialized recycling point. “There, the carpet is mechanically processed according to a unique procedure: it is first reduced to chips, after which contaminants such as metal residues and volatile components are removed as much as possible. In a final step, everything is melted and extruded into granules," Duchan explains.

Responsible and sustainable event carpets

"We're glad we could showcase the Rewind process," Bénédicte chimes in. "Because sustainability isn't the first thing that comes to mind when people think of event carpets. But we wanted to produce responsible and sustainable event carpets, moving away from the traditional disposable carpet. And we succeeded. We turned a disposable product into a circular product from the book, and we're pretty proud of that!" concludes Bénédicte.