Eyewear brand Ace & Tate has opened a store on Antwerp’s luxury shopping street Schuttershofstraat. The interior has been decorated with recycled plastic waste, in an attempt to lower its carbon footprint.
Antwerp waste
The new shop is decorated with large sheets that were made from plastic waste. Ace & Tate turned to the Dutch company Plasticiet, which collected and processed approximately one tonne of plastic waste in Antwerp. The sheets cover the counters and wall panels in the store. “They managed to get hold of all kinds of plastic objects from Antwerp that came from the households of Antwerp families”, Isabel Dingle of Ace & Tate explains in local newspaper GVA.
The eyewear chain has been making efforts to reduce its own ecological footprint for some time, but it is not yet a sustainable company. “We want to become an engine for positive change and over time, we hope to make the eyewear industry more sustainable”, Dingle said. In Germany, Ace & Tate have already worked with designer Boris de Beijer, who made merchandising blocks from the leftover eyewear material.
When the first Swiss branch was set up, the chain already used the services of Plasticiet. “The mission of the Rotterdam company is to stop the flow of plastic waste and to use it instead as a building block for the future. That is very much in line with our goal. The new Antwerp store now takes our mission to the next level.” Ace & Tate now has more than fifty stores in ten European countries.
