Magical recycling
Lostboyslab is a circular design studio and Scandinavia’s largest 3D print farm. What is unique about Lostboyslab is that the company is all about sustainability from the ground up. For example, instead of manufacturing products from new materials, at Lostboyslab, speakers are produced from used tires and furniture from ocean waste.
“We are small, we’re agile, and we are very creative, and we believe in magic. That’s why we are Lost Boys,” says Stefan Larsson, founder of Lostboyslab. The name references Peter Pan and Tinkerbell’s magical touch.
Lostboyslab specializes in additive manufacturing, covering the entire spectrum from concept and design to 3D printing of the end product. Their business concept is based on a circular economy, following the 7R model. The process starts with recycled materials, used to create a new product that can be repaired and recycled repeatedly.
Digital Product Passport – whatt.io
All Lostboyslab products are designed from the ground up to use as few resources as possible, usually recycled materials, and are built for easy repair and recycling. Out of necessity, Lostboyslab engineers developed a digital passport system, now part of a separate company called whatt.io. The digital product passport is a cloud-based platform providing instant access to comprehensive product information for any physical product using NFC.
How does this platform help you? Suppose you purchased a product three years ago; today, three years later, the product stopped working. Using the whatt.io service, you can, by tapping your phone on the product, find out exactly what components have been used to build it and choose to order a new part or download a CAD file to 3D print it yourself at home. Also, you can find out what materials have been used to produce the product so that if you decide to retire it, you know how to recycle it.
Speakers from used tires
Lostboyslab creates its materials from recycled resources. These materials come from major waste streams worldwide, including sawdust, tire rubber, ocean nets, and plastic bottles from Thailand beaches. They are then turned into hybrid materials optimized for 3D printing.
“Our carbon footprint is extremely low. The biggest part of the carbon footprint is not the machines or the material production but the transportation in between. Still, it’s very, very low,”
One example of a product made from recycled materials is Infinite Acoustics’ hi-fi speakers. Their enclosure is made from worn-out tires and marine debris. The material used for the speakers is Addnite Black Velvet, which is exclusively produced by Lostboyslab and used solely for these speakers.
Furniture from recycled materials
Another example is the “Paper Plane Furniture” series, manufactured using a massive 3D printing Magnum machine. Instead of thin threads, sustainable furniture is made directly from granules.
“The chair I’m sitting on here is the bar chair from Paper Plane series, and this is made from 50% recycled wood and 50% recycled PPE,” adds Larsson.
Trash pickers made from trash
Another exciting product for which Lostboyslab has developed the design and mechanics is a trash picker for Håll Sverige Rent. The trash picker is made from waste collected on Swedish beaches.
“They will be used on beaches in Sweden to pick up trash.”
The collected trash will be then used to produce new litter pickers.
Sustainable local production
At Lostboyslab, sustainability and circular thinking are at the core of the company, from industrial design to production management. Stefan Larsson is convinced that additive 3D production combined with local micro-factories will transform the manufacturing industry.
“There is no setup time. This is digital manufacturing. It means that a design can be designed on a computer and 10 minutes later we start the production and we can produce one or we can make one thousand. It’s on-demand, local manufacturing!”
“You should only manufacture what you need. Everything else you keep in digital files and you produce locally. Just like you do with crops and apples in the old days, you actually went to the local farmer and get your apples and your potatoes. We are back in the same era.” Stefan Larsson
Refuse using virgin materials
At the end of our interview with Stefan Larsson, the visionary behind Lostboyslab we asked him how other companies could start their sustainability journey.
“People have to start thinking differently. Use recycled materials, first of all. Just refuse using virgin material!”
“Everybody can do something. They might be unable to change the whole company because they’ve been around for 20 years. […] So it’s just to start discussing it […] and say we have to figure out ways where we consume less and we recycle what we do, and we think about the environment in anything we have in our business models, in our plans.”
Stefan Larsson
