WasteAway , A Circular Focus Pod for Workplaces and Education Environments

WasteAway by Koskela transforms one of the office fitout industry's most overlooked waste streams, laminate MDF and particleboard workstation desktops, into focused, functional spaces for work and learning. Each year, thousands of these desktops are stripped from offices and sent to landfill when organisations relocate or refit. WasteAway gives them a second life.

This isn't downcycling. We upcycle: the reclaimed desktops form the structural panels of a focus pod designed for workplace and education environments, smart, circular, and built for real-world use.

The central design challenge of working with reclaimed material is unpredictability. Salvaged desktops vary in size, substrate, finish and condition, many feature cable management cutouts or scalloped edges that standard manufacturing processes can't accommodate. Rather than treating this as a limitation, we made it the design brief. Our solution: an efficient clip-based assembly system that accommodates dimensional variation across desktop sizes, paired with a removable slip-on upholstered cover that conceals surface inconsistencies and cutouts, creating a consistent, polished result from irregular raw material.

Each WasteAway 2-person back-to-back pod repurposes six reclaimed laminate desktops, diverting an estimated 85–145 kg CO₂e per unit from landfill, accounting for both avoided landfill emissions and the virgin particleboard or MDF that would otherwise have been manufactured. In Australia, where almost no take-back or product stewardship scheme exists for laminate board products, that impact matters.

The upholstered covers use waste wool felt padding (not fossil fuel-derived foam) and fabric preferenced from Instyle's 100% Australian-made eco wool textile range, keeping the material story circular from frame to finish. And when it's time to refresh, each cover can be reupholstered on-site without returning to a manufacturer.