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We Design for a Resilient Future

For over three decades we have investigated what it means to design products and operate our business responsibly, by considering human health, social equity, and our shared environment. Today, we collaborate with others in our industry and beyond to solve problems and remove barriers to making healthy, useful products designed for a circular, low-carbon economy.

Intentional Design

Recognizing that up to 80% of a product’s possible impacts can be embedded early in the design process, we carefully consider a product’s lifecycle, utility, and wellbeing to the user in our practice. We continue to experiment with the most effective ways to design beautiful, useful, sustainable products of lasting value.

Design is the first signal of human intention.
William McDonough

Intentional Design

Loop to Loop: Design for Circularity

Designtex’s Loop to Loop platform is created by upcycling our own textile waste. A decade ago, we began an ongoing collaboration with three supply chain partners to collect our textile cutting waste from furniture manufacturing and transform it into new yarn. The new yarn using this waste is woven into an array of upholstery and multiuse fabrics.

Closing the loop on our fabric waste not only yielded the first upholstery pattern Loop to Loop (included in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design museum), but also a group of textiles that are consciously designed with future recycling in mind. By avoiding finishes, backings, and harmful ingredients, these textiles can easily enter a circular system for another life, when their time comes.

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Intentional Design

Biophilia: Connecting People with the Wellbeing of the Outdoors

Our approach to shapes, colors, textures and materials is deeply rooted in the principles of biophilia, which is the innate human attraction to the natural world. Research has shown that incorporating biophilic design into the built environment can have significant positive psychological and physiological responses, including stress reduction and improvements to mental wellbeing. Referencing the complex geometries and chromatics of nature, our designs provide spaces with elements that offer gentle support to our visual and haptic senses.

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Intentional Design

CELLIANT®: Wellness at Work

With a goal of improving wellness for people seated indoors, we developed a proprietary upholstery backing to deliver the health benefits of CELLIANT. Our CELLIANT textiles are clinically proven to harness and recycle a person’s body heat into infrared energy. Physical contact with the safe, naturally occurring thermo-reactive minerals in the upholstery increases local blood circulation and tissue oxygenation to, quite literally, boost energy and wellbeing. Simply sit back and relax.

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Materials and Transparency

Our focus on material health began in 1993, when we partnered with McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry to assess the safety of over 8,000 chemicals used in the textile industry.  We continue to apply those early lessons, enlisting our suppliers and partnering across industries, academia, and public health to improve the safety of surface materials for interior applications. Acknowledging that transparency has helped us make better-informed decisions, we provide Health Product Declarations (HPDs) on our products to help our customers do the same.

  • Red List Chemistry

    Products that do not contain PVC, PFAS, antimicrobials or FR and that emit low- or no-VOCs.

  • Low-Emitting Certified

    Products that have a third party certification verifying low emissions; to maintain good indoor air quality.

  • Contribute to LEED and WELL Ratings

    Products that can contribute to the LEED and WELL Building rating systems based on product content, material health and/or transparency of information.

  • mindfulMaterials

    Products listed in the mindfulMaterials database that demonstrate one or more features of the Common Materials Framework (Climate Health, Human Health, Ecosystem Health, Social Health and Equity, Circular Economy).

  • Manufacturer’s Materials Pledge

    Designtex is also a signatory to the Manufacturer’s Material’s Pledge. This pledge is aligned with AIA’s pledge that aims to improve the health of the planet through better materials specification.

Environmental and Human Health Positions

Click here to learn about our transition away from the use of PFAS in our products.

Click here for our position to limit the use of antimicrobials in our products.

Click here for our position to limit the use of flame retardants and when they are utilized.

Climate and Ecosystem Health

Climate change is the most important challenge of our time. We know that we must act as a company and in collaboration with others to ensure a livable future. Designtex is committed to a net-zero future by 2050 and we are transforming our business and products to meet this new reality.

In 2010, Designtex began offseting operational carbon by investing in renewable energy and carbon reduction projects across North America and beyond. Today, our climate goals are guided by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), which tells us how much and how quickly we need to reduce carbon emissions in line with the Paris Climate Agreement—an international treaty to limit warming to 1.5°C to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. We are committed to a net-zero future in which we eliminate over 90% of our carbon emissions by 2050 across our entire value chain, including embodied carbon in products, the emissions from operations, and from our transportation, distribution, travel and commuting practices.

Social Health and Equity

As a Steelcase company, Designtex is proud to be part of an organization that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion, has consistently been awarded HRC’s “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality,” and has a board of directors made up of over 50% women.  Our supplier code of conduct ensures we utilize a diversified and safe supply chain.  Our supply chain management practices meet the UN Global Compact’s principles on human rights and labor practices.

View our Corporate Compliance policies

View ESG Reporting & UN Global Compact

Designtex employees as Weave NY event

Resources

Company sustainability resources are listed here.  For individual product sustainability resources, see Product Resources.

Click here for our company sustainability statement.

Click here to read our Net Zero Transition Plan.

Click here for our corporate compliance policies.

Click here to find ESG reporting and UN Global Compact progress.

Click here for our position to limit the use of flame retardants and when they are utilized.

Click here for our position to limit the use of antimicrobials in our products.

Click here to learn about our transition away from the use of PFAS in our products.

Beauty, Utility, Sustainability

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