Contributing to a circular economy

To reduce our environmental impact, the facilities team at Westfield Manukau is upgrading the tabletops in the food court with tops made from repurposed plastic waste from the centre.

The plastic waste being used to create the tabletops would ordinarily have been recycled, but as we work to reduce our environmental impact, our teams are exploring opportunities to move beyond recycling and keep our materials within the circular economy.

“When I learnt that Critical Design had developed a process to repurpose plastic waste into furniture products, I was immediately keen to learn more because I was looking for a sustainable and responsible way to upgrade the tabletops in our food court,” said Darren Healy, Facilities Manager at Westfield Manukau.

“We met Rui Peng, the co-founder of Critical Design, who is a local to the Manukau community and learnt more about the repurposing process which delivers a durable product which is perfect for our tabletops. As a locally-owned business with the factory close to our centre, our partnership has the added benefits of allowing us to support New Zealand business and keep associated transport emissions low.

“We set about establishing a process for collecting the plastic waste we would need to divert from our usual recycling process.

“Our cleaning team collected milk cartons from Westfield Manukau business partners and separated plastic bottles from customer recycling. We then transported it to Critical Design’s factory where it was shredded and processed into a panel which was cut into six tabletops.

“We reused the existing table bases with our repurposed tabletops and the outcome looks fabulous, is durable and is a responsible and sustainable way for us to upgrade our customer experience.

“Each individual tabletop is made of approximately 164 clear milk bottles and lids, and 18 clear plastic bottles. In total, our tabletops repurposed over 1,000 plastic bottles.

“I’m really proud that we have created something ‘new’ for our community to use and enjoy which has come from existing and repurposed materials. The more materials we can keep within the circular economy, the more we can reduce our environmental impact.”

The team is now in the process of upgrading all the remaining tabletops in the food court at Westfield Manukau. Once the project is complete, we will have upgraded 95 tables with repurposed plastic tabletops made from over 6,000 plastic bottles.

From left: Sanam Deshar – Millennium Cleaning Supervisor, Sergio Ganem Villegas – Facilities
Co‑ordinator and Darren Healy – Facilities Manager.