There’s no doubt that in the last few years we have become much more aware of the impact of our lives on the plant. From superficial understanding of the environmental issues and virtue signalling to genuine commitment and willingness to drive change – we are springing into action on an individual and collective level.

Consumers make more conscious choices by gravitating towards eco-friendly brands, the architecture and design industry is spearheading efforts to create better environments for a greener future – and, more than ever before, the onus is on manufacturers and suppliers to create products that support this need to look after the world around us. After all, as R. Buckminster Fuller famously stated: “The best way to predict the future is to design it.”

For FYBER, one of Australia’s most innovative carpeting brands, sustainability has always held an important place – both from a design and operational point of view. In fact, one of the reasons FYBER manufactures all of their products in Europe has as much to do with their unique design, textile heritage and manufacturing practices, as it does with Europe’s advanced outlook on sustainability – and the environmental standards that reinforce it.

David Raines, FYBER’s founder and global head of strategy, explains that Europe’s focus on green technology enables the brand to ensure that their products have that same sustainable focus and work towards a circular economy, wherever possible. “Our products are able to be 100 per cent broken down and recycled into other items,” he says. “Through our European heritage, we have been able to work with an organisation that can take the yarn we use and instead of sending it to landfill, turn it into other items.”

But FYBER aren’t interested solely in ensuring their own products can be turned into something else at the end of their lifecycle. “Pollution is nothing but resources we’re not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value,” Fuller also famously said, and FYBER’s latest product comes from the appreciation of this notion – making use of traditionally unappreciated, discarded and abandoned resources.

Fittingly called Bloom, the new carpet and rug product is made entirely with ECONYL® yarn, which is a 100 per cent regenerated nylon that comes from used fish nets, old carpets and other synthetic materials that would traditionally end up in landfill. The ability to reuse materials often branded as rubbish is an incredibly important part of ensuring less waste ends up in a garbage lot – or in the ocean. This is particularly relevant since dumped fishing gear, or – as Greenpeace refers to it in their report – “ghost gear”, is the biggest source of plastic pollution in our oceans, and is set to outnumber fish by 2050. 

Utilising recycled materials and products – such as ECONYL® – can help reduce the plastic pollution in the ocean and let marine life thrive. In addition, each 10,000 tons of raw ECONYL® material means 65,100 tonnes of CO2eq. less emissions are released into the atmosphere – and, when compared to material from oil, the progressive fibre helps reduce nylon’s  global warming impact by an incredibly substantial 90 per cent. And at the end of its life, ECONYL® can be recycled which means that updating an interior or bringing a new creative vision to life will have a lesser environmental impact.

The new product release, available to Australian designers as part of FYBER’s Bloom Collection, further advances the environmental ambitions of the brand, and invites designers and specifiers to join them along the way – without compromising their design vision. The environmental profile of the new carpet and rug product is matched by its creative potential. With over 10,000 colour options available and FYBER’s famed customisation capabilities, designers can print any design – in any shape – to fully bring their idea to life in a more sustainable way.

Any designer who would like to explore the rich potential of this highly sustainable product, and get a sense of its texture or FYBER’s available palette, should visit FYBER at their Sydney showroom. The brand’s immersive Sydney atelier is an engaging sensory experience offering inspiration, invaluable advice from their team of carpet and design experts – and a chance to make any interior more environmentally friendly.

FYBER
fyber.com.au