Retail furniture, fixtures and merchandising often end up in landfill sites. Aware of this waste and the untapped potential of reusing or repurposing them, store implementation and brand activation company Concourse Display Management has launched an innovative new sustainability initiative.

“Through working in these partnerships with local charities our aim is two-fold,” explained Concourse Director Chris Morriss. “Firstly, to ensure we are leading the way in travel retail, designing and building materials in a sustainable way as much as possible and secondly, focusing on what happens to these assets at the end of a project’s life through building a complete service to ensure they get put to good use.”

Concourse’s ReStore team is already developing a project on Lagardère Travel Retail’s behalf for a Singapore charity called The Food Bank. The charity collects, reuses, repurposes and distributes food to those who are food insecure in Singapore (a startling 10% of the population), and to save on food waste (a record 30% imported food in Singapore).

The company has also started talks with a company in India that had already developed a branded charity business called Shelf Life. Shelf Life is a standalone social business that partners with brands, and Concourse has agreed for ReStore to be the exclusive partner for this initiative within the duty free and travel retail channel.

“Encouragingly, we’re seeing a more eco-friendly approach to the concept, design and manufacture work we do for our clients in travel retail worldwide, with an increasing need to use sustainable materials,” noted Concourse Group Business Development Lead Mathieu Vazart.