2020 Recycling & Waste Management Awards

BUILD Recycling & Waste Management Awards 2020 16 t the very heart of Time and Garden, is the company’s shared love of architecture, and building material from across the world. Going into further detail, Tomohiro begins by sharing the company’s admiration and passion for architecture and building material. “At Time and Garden, we travel worldwide for treasure hunting and for finding the building material, something new, something wonderful - one and only unique items. We do not only select existing material, but also we produce our own original design item by ourselves. Lastly, we are heavily committed to recycle, upcycle or reuse - our most important key issue.” Chief buyer, designer and architect, Tomohiro, always creates from his point of view. Creating and producing from the point of the architect is how the company and brand (Material World) is able to differentiate itself from its competitors. “We are interested in recycling and upcycling and using natural materials instead of chemical, plastic or vinyl. It is no secret that we deal with so many varieties of items and materials, not just wood, but also stone, tiles, iron and fabrics. Additionally, we only use high quality material, we employ originality, unique design and reasonable pricing - these are the strong advantages for our customers.” The company itself is very small and does not have huge advertising budgets, therefore it always has to be unique and produce something different from the others in order to be picked up. “Our company slogan is ‘SMALL is the NEW BIG!’” enthuses Tomohiro. “Each employee has to be challenging himself always, creating something, improving something, and making a better place in the world.” Many of the company’s projects have been produced using recycled or upcycled materials, and Tomohiro highlights. “For example, INDIGO UNITED 1969 is made of Jeans. JAMAICAN CLASSIC is made of coffee dust. TEXAS ROCK’N WALL is made of recycled Teak wood. TOSCANAWAY is made of waste stone small chip. We do not use only one specific item!” There have been issues that the industry has faced in Japan recently, with many companies being hit hard by certain events, and Time and Garden was no exception to this rule. Most Sustainable Building Materials Manufacturer – Japan & Innovation Award for Reversible Stone Products Time and Garden Co, based in Tokyo, was established in 2006 by Company President, Tomohiro Horibe who is a licensed 1st Grade Architect in Japan. Recently, we profiled Time and Garden and caught up with Tomohiro to discover more about the company’s innovative work and how the team are committed to recycling, upcycling and reusing. A Sep201096 “Consumption tax was raised from 8% to 10% last October in Japan. It made a big impact on our industry because the price of construction is not cheap - it may only be a 2% increase, but it made a big difference.” he explains. “When we buy something from another country, we have to pay 10% importing consumption tax too. Also, many of our customer projects were stopped and cancelled due to Covid-19. It had a huge impact to our business. Not only for us, there are also many more companies struggling with this situation.” However, it seems that, despite facing adversity, Time and Garden has a bright and productive future ahead. “In Japan, our quality of construction is the best in the world under the very severe building code. And we have a lot of high quality made-in-Japan products. Our business is in Japan now, but for the future, we would like to introduce our high- quality and very unique products to the overseas market. “Ultimately, we try to keep up to date with worldwide architectural news, so every staff member of ours needs to have an international outlook.” Contact: Tomohiro Horibe Company: Time and Garden. Web Address: www.materialworld.jp Time and Garden