A belief in ‘mono-material’ products & a passion for cardboard

The story of Jan & his world of cardboard

Jan enjoys the challenge of getting people who make their choices for other, conscious reasons to make a sustainable choice anyway, without even realising it. Almost 9 years ago, while Jan was researching cardboard in depth, the idea came up by chance over drinks: to develop a sustainable alternative in the form of a fully recyclable 2-person tent made of cardboard, called the KarTent. A sustainable product that pays attention not only to the type of material used, but also to how it can be recycled. After a festival, KarTent collects the used tents so that the cardboard can be reused. Further research showed that 1 in 4 tents were left behind on the site after a festival, and were therefore removed and destroyed as residual waste; a shame as well as bad for the environment!

A strong belief in ‘mono-material’ products & a passion for cardboard

Cardboard turned out to be a suitable, cheaper and sustainable alternative not just for tents, but also for many other kinds of everyday products, such as toys, furniture, home accessories and office furniture. Over the past few years, hundreds of new cardboard products have been added, both own designs and made-to-order pieces, including the Eco-dreamer Intention tree.

Jan believes manufacturers should increasingly develop products made entirely from one material, so-called mono-material products. “Consumers are quite willing to separate their waste so it can be recycled, and local councils are happy to make that possible too. But when products are made from lots of different materials, even if each of those materials is recyclable on its own, the collection and recycling process becomes too complex and therefore unfeasible. That’s why I think that if we try more and more, at product level, to make the whole product from one material, recycling and reuse will become not only possible, but also more feasible.

We’re currently on a quest to discover everything you could make from cardboard, and some of those things are really catching on. Mostly they’re products that are handier because of their practical nature: a cheap bed that’s easy to put together, no tools needed. Or a temporary curtain that you quickly need when moving house. A cardboard play kitchen instead of a plastic one, which children can colour in themselves and which you can put in the paper recycling bin after six months, once they’ve finished playing with it,” says Jan.

For Jan, a sustainable lifestyle is in the little things

With KarTent, Jan tries to offer sustainable alternatives, and he greatly admires entrepreneurs who tackle sustainability purely from an ideological vision and dare to make their business model subordinate to that vision. Entrepreneurs like this often focus first on solving an urgent problem, trusting that the rest will follow later. “Above all, I admire them because they don’t seem to mind that much and they go for it with total conviction. Thanks to their strong belief in their ideological vision, they dare to walk the line between naivety and ‘bad’ entrepreneurship. A now well-known and successful example of this type of sustainable entrepreneur is Boyan Slat.”

“I’m not really a sustainability guru myself when it comes to my lifestyle,” Jan admits. “I still eat meat, I still drive a petrol car and I still fly, for example. For me it’s mostly in the little things, like the fact that I don’t buy much. And I repair a lot, mainly because I enjoy it, and that’s my personal contribution for now. At the moment my priorities lie with KarTent, and I don’t feel I have the headspace to take the next steps towards making my lifestyle more sustainable. As a consumer, I do think it’s a shame that packaging-free shops and ‘selling by the jar’ haven’t really taken off yet. That’s something I would choose, because I believe it would make a real impact. I do think, though, that before it can really take off, two questions need answering: Can we adapt transport so that products don’t need packaging to arrive undamaged? Can we, as consumers, accept a short shelf life?”

“These days, many people actually feel they need to shield their new ideas during the development phase. At some point I started to feel a bit deflated by people who told me they had a good idea, but it wasn’t ‘ready to share’ yet. By keeping it to yourself, you develop something that you want, not what other people want.”

Jan Portheine

Reaching a wider audience in a world full of different sustainability claims remains a challenge

According to Jan, sustainable entrepreneurs shouldn’t communicate only about sustainability if they want to reach a wider audience. Changing the impact we humans have on the climate and the environment is often seen as something that takes years. It also feels less tangible. Sustainable alternatives often cost more than non-sustainable ones. That said, this has long since stopped being true across the board. These are all reasons why sustainability is still the deciding factor in buying behaviour for only some people. Most people only tend to change their behaviour when there are short-term, practical and/or personal benefits to be gained. Jan sees examples of this in practice too: “Many people have chosen to have solar panels installed on their roof because of the subsidy and the potential savings. That last point is exactly what gets discussed at a neighbourhood get-together or over Friday afternoon drinks. So if you bring something sustainable to market, you’ll reach a small group, because they also care about sustainability, but you also have to appeal to the rest by communicating other practical benefits, to keep the whole thing profitable. And if you’re working with new materials and/or applications, consumers may have doubts due to a lack of experience. That’s the case with our cardboard products too. Is it really strong enough? Will it hold? Will it last? How does it cope with moisture? I don’t know anyone who has one, so why would I?”

Finally, companies already communicate a great deal about sustainability, and in many different ways. The material is sustainably produced. CO2 emissions are offset elsewhere. It’s recycled, so it’s sustainable. It can be recycled, so it’s sustainable. There are certainly also examples of things that mainly look sustainable but aren’t. The sincerity of a sustainability claim is often hard to substantiate, partly because it’s still difficult to measure. Calculating emissions across the entire supply chain is still a complex, theoretical exercise, and perhaps it isn’t tangible enough for consumers either. ‘Waste’ might be a tangible first angle. How much waste is created during the entire life cycle of your product (from production to the end of its use by the consumer)? What kind of waste is it? Does it have to be destroyed? Or can it easily be reused, recycled or upcycled? Either way, it remains a complex playing field, where the challenge lies with businesses and the solution with the government.

To stop the term ‘sustainability’ from losing even more of its value, companies also need to keep asking themselves critical questions and communicate transparently about them: ‘To what extent is what they do truly sustainable? Which sustainable choices have they made? But also, which ones are they not making yet? Why not, and what’s standing in their way?’ “I can be honest about it. We still ship with PostNL. We still have a diesel company van. We work with sustainable materials and use them to make sustainable alternatives, but we definitely don’t have a fully sustainable supply chain yet. We can be open and honest about that. We’re simply not financially independent enough for that yet.”

An important lesson: share and collaborate when developing ideas

“A valuable lesson I’ve learned and want to share with other sustainable entrepreneurs is that when you have ideas, you need to seek out interaction with others, for example by pitching, executing and testing together with customers. At Delft University of Technology we didn’t do that; I was surrounded by students, all with great ideas. We would work out all those ideas perfectly, and then you go to market with your product and discover that nobody wants it. These days, many people actually feel they need to shield their new ideas during the development phase. At some point I started to feel a bit deflated by people who told me they had a good idea, but it wasn’t ‘ready to share’ yet. By keeping it to yourself, you develop something that you want, not what other people want. It’s precisely interaction and collaboration that can make an idea better, and therefore successful too.”