New sustainable connections thanks to the Green Future Club

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Courtesy Green Future Club

At Dutch Design Week 2021, we met Nikolett Madai, Project Manager of Green Future Club, a non-profit organisation that supports and promotes sustainable projects on a range of different scales

The race towards a sustainable future takes more than one direction. Over the last few years, projects of various kinds, from independent experiments to innovations by large companies, have pointed to a very wide range of opportunities. It is only by emphasising the great diversity of approaches to sustainability that we will be able to underscore the notion that collaboration and interdependency are essential and determining factors for life and survival on our planet. In order to stop the various initiatives appearing fragmented or isolated, we need to create intermediate organisms (networks and platforms) that will offer support, build connections, trigger debate and help guarantee the quality and genuine sustainability of concepts and products on the market. This is what the non-profit organisation Green Future Club, headquartered in Berlin, is all about, with its mission to accelerate the sustainable development of materials, products and services. “Green Future Club brings together and connects sustainable projects from students, start-ups and established companies from all over the world,” Nikolett Madai, the organisation’s Project Manager, told us.

04 --- gfc-ddw21-plastifantasti — Lior Amsterdam, PlastiFantasti - Green Concept Award Nominee 2021 in the category interior & lifestyle

Under the claim “Let’s Design the Future,” the organisation carries out various initiatives throughout Europe in a bid to promote solutions and concepts with an environmental bias. The main promotional tools for these concepts are the Green Product Awards and the Green Concept Awards, launched in 2013 and geared respectively to products already on the market and to those not yet on the market. The aim of the awards is also to shed a much broader light on environmental, social and financial sustainability. “The award is split into 12 categories: Architecture & Tiny Houses, Building Components, New Materials, Consumer Goods, Fashion, Handicraft, Interior & Lifestyle, Kids, Kitchen, Mobility, Sport and Workspace,” said Madai.

More than 1,500 designers and companies from 51 different countries around the world took part this year. The projects are brought together in an annual publication, The Green Trend Book, featuring 100 concepts and 100 products, highlighting the winning projects each year. Green Future Club also curates and takes part with its network in a number of exhibitions around Europe. We found one of their installations at the exhibition Rethinking Plastic, organised by the Yksi Expo Eindhoven space during Dutch Design Week, Northern Europe’s leading design event, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year. Nikolett Madai filled us in on the variety of proposals selected for the exhibition. One of the noteworthy concepts on exhibit was for a shoe: “Sneature is a project for a trainer developed by the designer Emilie Burfeind at the Offenbach University of Art and Design in Germany. The shoe is made of dog hair, a biological waste material. The yarn spun from dog hair, also known as Chiengora, is an innovative solution for upcycling protein-based waste material. Sneature can be customised and is biodegradable.”

05 --- gfc-ddw21-sneature — Emilie Burfeind, Sneature - Green Concept Award Winner 2021 in the category fashion

Green Future Club’s support doesn’t simply consist of showcasing ideas. The organisation also offers a 360° tutoring programme, focused on developing every aspect of design, not just the concept and the production, but also the communication and dissemination of the ideas. To this end, it is absolutely crucial that new bridges are built between the young professionals and the companies featured on the platform. Basically, Green Future Club doesn’t just focus on the product – it is project for a community and its relationships.