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DESSO Appears at NUTEC- 12-14 November, Frankfurt Messe, Germany, Stand No. 1.2C23

12 November 2008

DESSO, leading European carpet manufacturer, is appearing at NUTEC - the first conference on the 'Cradle to Cradle' approach to sustainability -taking place on 12-14 November, 2008, at the Messe Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

NUTEC will explore ''Everlasting Cycles: How Waste becomes Food'' and question whether products and materials can be healthy for both humans and the environment, combine functionality and aesthetics, be produced with fairness - and yet be economically successful at the same time? At the expo, DESSO will help prove that the answer is ''yes'', demonstrating its commitment to the Cradle to Cradle concept and exhibiting its initiatives in this area.

Cradle to Cradle encourages companies to assess their activities concerning sustainability, recycling, waste management and carbon footprint - and make improvements throughout. NUTEC maintains that products can be conceived from the very start with intelligent design, ensuring that their material contents are beneficial, safe and profitable. With this approach, products can circulate as either 'technical' or biological nutrients in repeated cycles, and almost 100% of the materials can be reused - almost indefinitely!

Stef Kranendijk, DESSO CEO, says: ''This fundamentally new approach to the production of ecologically-intelligent materials produces high quality products and allows almost total reuse of all contents. No more should valuable materials end up in landfill sites at the end of their supposed 'lifetime', be incinerated causing damaging fumes to enter the environment, or be 'down-cycled' into lower quality materials. At DESSO, we have adopted Cradle to Cradle in our carpet manufacturing.''

Under Cradle to Cradle, household appliances - such as radios or TV sets - will be leased to customers and returned to the manufacturer when defunct so they can be disassembled and reused in new products as 'technical nutrients'. Carpets and upholstery are biodegradable and flame-retardant, and will therefore be returned to the earth as biological nutrients - and Desso is strongly in favour of this process.

NUTEC (short for Nutrients Upcycling Triple-Top-Line Eco-effectiveness Community) is the brainchild of EPEA Internationale Umweltforschung and Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart, in association with Messe Frankfurt. The event combines a trend-setting congress and trade exhibition, to be attended by over 50 companies. The congress will feature 'lighthouse' presentations and roundtable discussions to encourage the sharing of ideas, information and research and development between companies and users. Best-practice examples will illustrate how Cradle to Cradle can be applied in various sectors, and participants will learn about the latest ideas in this field.

DESSO Cradle to Cradle brochure will be available on our stand No. 1.2C23.

For more information on Cradle to Cradle, please download our brochure.