Meet Cyrc.

interview from CCC Studio 4th edition

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We make design objects that make it easier for you to be a consumer living by your principles.

It is imperative that we create a future where the simple act of owning a vase or a chair doesn't come with hidden costs from extraction, production, and exploitation.

The pursuit of ethical, climate-positive, zero-waste furniture is what drives us.

Let's use what we have already made.

We’ve extracted a lot of oil to make plastic that is both extremely durable and able to be used again and again. It's inexcusable to let it go to waste. The plastic that we don't recycle ends up in our environment and our food chain, wreaking havoc.

Our materials

The flexibility of 3D printing means we can reimagine the entire business model with sustainability as the foundation.

Large format 3D printing is an exciting frontier with the potential to change the furniture industry. With our printers we can produce on-demand, make customizations, and more easily remanufacture old products into new ones.

It’s time to stop externalizing costs.

Externalized costs are costs generated by producers but carried by society as a whole. In today’s linear economy, materials typically move through the stages of extraction, production, distribution and disposal and all along the way there are social and environmental damages. Climate change is the bill that’s due from years of externalizing costs this way.

Through a circular economy model and a commitment to sustainability, we try to remove every possible externalized cost from production and consumption.

Our products are designed, manufactured, shipped, and recycled in our studio in Montréal. 

PROBLEM I

Plastic pollution is catastrophic

Plastic waste that makes its way into natural ecosystems is called “mismanaged.” We feel any plastic that is landfilled or incinerated has been mismanaged.

Plastics will last anywhere from hundreds of years to forever. Almost every plastic can be recycled, but not if we don't change how we use and dispose of it.

PROBLEM I

At the end of its use, plastic tipically has three possible fates:
1. landfilled
2. incinerated
3. polluting the natural environment

More than 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced since 1950. Compared to other artificial materials, only steel and cement are produced in higher amounts.

Problem 1

By 2015, of the 5.8 billion tonnes of plastic no longer in use, only 9% has been recycled and 79% has accumulated in landfills or the natural environment.

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Problem I

If current production and waste management trends continue, roughly 12 billion tonnes of plastic waste will be in landfills or polluting the natural environment by 2050.

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Problem I

Every year, at least 8 million tonnes of plastic leak into the ocean–a leak equivalent to dumping the contents of one garbage truck into the water every minute

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Tell your story

If a business-as-usual scenario continues, the ocean is expected to contain one tonne of plastic for every three tonnes of fish by 2025, and by 2050, more plastics than fish (by weight)

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Problem I

Yeah, it’s that bad.
It’s time to change our habits.

Roughly half of all plastic waste comes from packaging that was used for less than six months. We desperately need to change our habits, laws and regulations around how we use and dispose of plastics.

There’s so much material to use: both new plastic that can be well-managed and past waste that isn’t going to just disappear.

Problem 2

Fast Furniture is an environmental fiasco

Marketing and globalization have reframed the furniture industry. It’s style over substance. While brands like Zara and H&M produce “fast fashion,” we now have an analogous industry trend for furniture.

Unlike the fashion industry, the furniture industry has not been forced to confront its sustainability problems and related ethical issues.

Problem 2

Furniture is the least recycled household item

Furniture is typically made from complex assemblies of multiple types of materials. It is manufactured to be assembled as quickly as possible, with no mandate for its disassembly. Special adhesives and hardware only add to the frustration.

There’s no economy that supports the disassembly and recovery of these materials.

Problem 2

Really Fast furniture

Ikea makes one BILLY bookcase every 3 seconds. It’s made from veneer-covered particle board that cannot be recycled. Since the product’s launch in 1978, Ikea has produced more than 60 million BILLY bookcases, and its price has come down by about a third.

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Problem 2

“Get the prices down and you increase sales – we created that demand, not the consumer,” says Johan Stenebo, who held senior positions at Ikea for 20 years, including a stint as its environmental director and quit Ikea in 2008. “That’s why I have a problem now with discussions about climate change,” he adds. “It’s corporate-driven but we always talk about consumer behaviour.”

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Problem 2

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that over 12 million tons of furniture are discarded in the US every year

80% of that discarded furniture goes to landfills and the rest is incinerated.Almost none of it is recycled(0.003%). However, the problems start before it’s even sold.

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Problem 2

We might assume that buying solid wood furniture is a sustainable option because of the natural material, but unfortunately, the reality is more complicated

Problem 2

Deforestation is the second leading cause of climate change

The world loses almost six million hectares of forest each year to deforestation. That’s like losing an area the size of Portugal every two years. 95% of this loss occurs in the tropics.

Just four commodities—beef, soy, palm oil and wood products—drive the majority of tropical deforestation.

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Problem 2

Where furniture manufacturing booms, deforestation follows

Logging to feed furniture factories in China, spurred by demand from the United States, is thinning the forests of Central Africa. In Vietnam, authorities turn a blind eye to illegal logging. So much forest has been cleared that loggers have moved across the borders into neighbouring Laos and Cambodia, where they’re illegally razing forests. Illegal logging and land conversion like this is happening all over the globe.

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True sustainability takes responsibility for the whole life cycle of the product.

Recycling rates for plastics are as low as 9%, and furniture is near 0%. This is why our products come back to us at the end of their use. Cyrc ensures the materials never become waste entering landfills or the natural environment.