An example of circular economy applied to transport design showcased in the exhibition-event “The New State of Materials”, curated by Materially and Lazzerini for Milano Design Week 2026. Nextchem, MAIRE Group business unit dedicated to sustainable technology solutions and led by Managing Director Fabio Fritelli, also took part in the project.
The core of the exhibition, hosted at Stecca3 in the Isola district, was a revolutionary bus seat blending sustainability with practical design. Entirely made from recycled plastic, it is perfectly able to meet the demands of modern urban transport. By bringing together technology and Made in Italy design, the installation wants to demonstrate how post-consumer plastics can be transformed into a high-performance material that can be reintroduced into the production cycle.
The journey of the recycled plastic bus seat starts with post-consumer plastic, regenerated through Nextchem’s proprietary NX Replast™ technology. Instead of ending up in a landfill, the materials are processed in one of Nextchem companies’ facilities (MyReplast Industries) where they are transformed into high-quality polymer granules. Thanks to this process, called upcycling, the resulting material can access premium, high value-added markets, since it is able to meet strict performance standards like those required by public transport seating. “The transition becomes real only when technology can be translated into concrete industrial solutions”, says Fabio Fritelli, Managing Director of Nextchem, “Our role is to enable this step forward: turning waste into a valuable resource and making circularity a daily experience – scalable, replicable and measurable – without compromising performance”.
