JUUNOO’s Circular Value translates into preserving and enhancing the value of building materials over time. For clients it means increased profits from reduced total cost of ownership. For the planet it means reduced resource consumption and waste.
JUUNOO creates sustainable and flexible partitioning systems that include solid and glass walls, office pods and meeting boxes, all designed to be easily assembled and reused – much like Lego blocks. Installation of their demountable walls incorporates a patented system, which is 7 times faster than traditional systems and requires only a handful of components.
Their products are engineered to maintain their worth across multiple use cycles – not just recycling, but true reuse that preserves value.
Workplace Reconfiguration
As the office continues to evolve, there is increasing focus on spaces that can easily transition between different uses and accommodate various work models. To satisfy these demands JUUNOO has embraced a circular economy strategy integrating 7 key principles:
- Cost Effectiveness: JUUNOO Privacy Pods are designed for efficient installation, reconfiguration, and reuse, allowing our customer to receive top quality products at an unbeatable value.
- Circular Value: Using JUUNOO products reduces total cost of ownership where a high residual value is combined with a low cost of reuse.
- Buy-back program: Ensuring our products never end up as waste.
- Design for disassembly: Every component can be easily separated and reused.
- Material selection: Using durable materials that withstand multiple use cycles.
- Adaptability: Systems reconfigurable without specialized tools or skills.
- Refurbishment: Updating products to give them new life in different settings.
Plus, JUUNOO products offer the following sustainable product certifications:
Economic growth and environmental stewardship go hand in hand
– Chris Van de Voorde/CEO JUUNOO
The Circular Economy and how JUUNOO Provides Circular Value
Work Design Magazine connected with Chris Van de Voorde, Founder and CEO of JUUNOO to discuss the circular economy and how their products provide circular value.
WDM: There are many demountable walls and pods on the market. Your products specifically focus on flexibility, technology, well-being and sustainability. Please share details on how you are rethinking the entire lifecycle of our built environment.
Chris Van de Voorde: JUUNOO operates under the principle of a circular valuable economy, which focuses on extending material value in order to make a profit. Simply put, the longer we can keep our products in the consumer pipeline, the more money they will make for both our customer and for us in the long run. But, to pull this off, we needed really good product design.
I am a big proponent of first principles thinking, which challenges you to question every assumption when solving a problem. Instead of defaulting to “Let’s do it this way because that’s what everyone else does,” it pushes you to look for solutions from different perspectives.
For example, one of our key challenges was creating walls and pods that maintain high value not just at initial purchase, but also when reused. This meant we needed to decrease labor costs for installation, dismantling and reuse. The traditional method relies on screws, glue, and messy, high-waste materials – but we questioned if this was really the best solution.
Looking to other industries for inspiration, I discovered that many airplane parts are held together with industrial-strength Velcro. I reasoned that if it can withstand turbulence at 30,000 feet, it should certainly work for construction on the ground. And it does. The main advantage is that it’s faster to install and uninstall than conventional methods, while avoiding visible screws – enhancing the aesthetic value.
We also took a layering approach when designing. Our motto is, “Keep the body, change the skin.” Interior design trends change quickly. Every tenant wants to leave their mark on a space. Those redesign costs add up quickly for property owners. So, we created a product that could easily be changed or reconfigured to meet tenant needs. The sizing is modular, so you can easily add or remove space. The walls can be repainted, and the textile on our booths can easily be swapped out for a different one. And not only that, but we’ve ensured that all these things can be done quickly and efficiently. Because if we can’t scale our processes, we can’t grow.
WDM: Please share more details on your buy-back and refurbishment programs. In the US, we’re not seeing that from furniture manufacturers, but rather from third-party after-market players. How could this model change the relationship with furniture purchasing/ownership?
Chris Van de Voorde: It’s funny—our customers don’t think much about our buy-back program initially, but when it comes time to sell our products back to us, they get very excited about the profit they make in return.
Our buyback program succeeds because we engineered our products from the start to be profitable to reuse, which changes the entire ownership dynamic. Unlike traditional manufacturers or third-party resellers who struggle with buyback economics, our products maintain their value through deliberate design for disassembly and reuse.
This approach transforms furniture purchasing from a depreciating expense into an investment with guaranteed future value. The financial benefit becomes clear when customers realize they can recover value through our buyback program, making it a sound business decision for both parties.
WDM: Tell us more about the Circular Value Index and how our readers can use this model to develop their circular strategies.
Chris Van de Voorde: The Circular Value Index is a formula that measures whether a product is profitable to reuse in a circular business model. It calculates circular value through three key components:
- residual value (what the item is worth after use),
- cost of reuse (expenses involved in refurbishment/redeployment), and
- associated risks (environmental, health, regulatory, and financial).
The formula shows that high circular value occurs when residual value is high and cost of reuse is low, assuming acceptable risk levels. This mathematical approach helps businesses assess if their products are truly designed for profitable circularity. The key insight is that reuse only happens when it makes financial sense – products must maintain enough value to justify the costs of putting them back into service.
WDM: JUUNOO is aspiring to “make every interior wall in the world circular by 2030.” Tell us more about this goal.
Chris Van de Voorde: This goal encapsulates the second phase of our company. We’ve recently finished production of our latest product and are doing a test program in Germany—it’s a circular drywall system. It’s seven times faster to install than traditional drywall, there’s no need for plastering, measuring or cutting, and we estimate it is about 10% cheaper to install than conventional drywall overall. This product opens new markets for us, including healthcare, education, hospitality and potentially even residential. In our third phase, we’ll resell harvested materials at a fraction of the cost of new materials, making our circular products significantly more cost-competitive than traditional linear solutions.
WDM: Share some stories of how clients are using JUUNOO to create circular value in their workplace.
Chris Van de Voorde: We recently completed a 1.2 million Euro project for the Belgian government to renovate an existing building. One of the reasons we won the contract is that we reused a lot of the material already on site. Competitors came in with a higher price because they had to account for hauling the old material away and purchasing new material. But with a little bit of testing and some new quality control methods, we were able to reuse a lot of that material, and you’d never know by looking at the outside. The total cost savings were about 80,000 Euros.
For example, in another major project worth north of 500,000 Euros, a city needed to create temporary office space for engineers and planners working on a decade-long tunnel construction project. They set up the workspace in an old school building using about 70 of our pods. We offered them 100,000 Euros for reuse-rights after 10 years, but interestingly, they declined because they saw an opportunity to directly resell the material themselves. This showed us that customers are already recognizing and wanting to capture the long-term value of circular materials.
WDM: Kindly share any other information that would be of interest to our audience, comprised primarily of architects, interior designers, facility managers, property managers, coworking operators and more.
Chris Van de Voorde: Our new circular drywall system represents a fundamental breakthrough in construction technology. It eliminates the need for measuring, cutting, and plastering, and reduces overall installation costs by 10%. But the real innovation lies in its circular design – every component is engineered for multiple use cycles while maintaining premium quality and performance. This isn’t just an incremental improvement; it’s a complete reimagining of how walls should function in our built environment.
As we expand into other sectors, we’re demonstrating that circular design doesn’t just benefit the environment – it creates superior products that are faster to install, more adaptable, and more cost-effective over their lifecycle. This is how we’ll make every interior wall circular by 2030 – by making it the smartest choice for everyone involved.
The circular economy isn’t just a trend – it’s the future of office design.
JUUNOO is proving that circular design can deliver superior functionality, aesthetics and environmental performance, representing a shift in how we think about our built environment.
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Images courtesy of JUUNOO. This article was written in partnership with JUUNOO.
