THE "4 R" PHILOSOPHY WILL SAVE OUR PLANET

Antonio Mangiola
Oct 4, 2021

The planet, for years now, has been raising its cry of alarm. The linear economy, the current one, is no longer sustainable and has proven to be a danger to the health of all of us as well. The Covid-19 pandemic, still present in our daily lives, is accelerating a process of public awareness that has now become the central and starting point of every political decision, present and future. In our company, for some time, we have embraced the philosophy of the 4Rs. We work every day to ensure that every Waypoint, Lumicom and L-Tech lighting product can be Repaired, Refurbished, Regenerated, Recycled.

Nothing, from birth to the end, loses value, everything can be recovered, everything can be repaired.

This is the circular economy, this is our production philosophy. Who among you remembers the old appliance repair shops? Who remembers all those small activities in which, upon entering, you were overwhelmed by an infinite number of devices momentarily parked before being put back into operation and brought home like a relative after a hospital stay? Who remembers that expanse of spare parts recovered from no longer repairable appliances ready to come in handy for other repairs? Who remembers the reassuring face of the thousands of repair craftsmen who worked there?

“Don't worry, it will be as good as new, it will work better than before. See you next week."

"Being artisans meant recovering the maximum from the material that was processed" - says Alberto Baesso, mind and soul of the Waypoint Srl 4R philosophy - "When a craftsman bought a sheet of metal to work, for example, he never threw away the scraps because he knew that they could be useful for a future production, giving him the possibility not to buy new material, not to spend the money he often didn't have.”

A host of precursors of a philosophy of thought, action and strategy, strongly back in vogue after having failed in the past decades, years in which the linear economy and the the continuous extraction of resources and massive production have generated waste, objects (too many) thrown away, piled up somewhere, possibly far from our sight, from our homes, from our next polluting waste. A diseased system that has produced a worldwide short circuit culminating in the recent lockdown in which hundreds of millions of people across the globe have been forced into a forced and necessary quarantine in their homes. Months in which, each of us, must necessarily be subjected to an examination of conscience with respect to our life on planet earth and the extreme consumption of resources to which we have subjected it. Months in which at Waypoint we have continued to work and experiment to ensure that all our lighting products, even more than before, can be an added value in everyday life and should not, in any way, weigh on a level of pollution that absolutely needs an immediate paradigm change with respect to a production and consumption system that is no longer sustainable.

We work to ensure that each of our lighting products can always be Repaired, Refurbished, Regenerated, Recycled. The philosophy of the 4Rs is our philosophy, and you? Which side are you on?

Antonio Mangiola