“DerStandard” has published an article about our Upcycling-Workshop (in german)

The social project in collaboration with Caritas Wien brings together a diverse group of refugees in a workshop that will give birth to a upcycled office space.

The inspiring project is a platform for integration and sustainability, helping to create job opportunities and skills, and recycle materials that would otherwise be discarded as waste.

Over the coming weeks, under the guidance of Christine Skrabal from the design label, Miststück, refugees will undertake the upcycling workshop which will see old and unused furniture brought back to life.

The background story…

It’s a well-known reality that for people with a refugee background, it is difficult to find work in Austria. The wait for a positive response to an asylum application (which can often take months, or years) can make integration, and living a fulfilled life difficult.

As the refugees are not able to work during the processing period of their asylum application, this workshop aims to offer them skills, keep them active, and better their chances of their application being successful.

‘As alchemia-nova is an international team, made up of people from 8 different nationalities, we value the benefits that are born from people with diverse backgrounds working together. With this in mind, we came up with the idea for this upcycling project that will see Vienna’s first completely circular office created in a currently unused space,’ says alchemia-nova CEO, Francesco Menconi.

The goal of the project…

alchemia-nova’s mission is to advocate the circular economy approach, and to encourage businesses & individuals to #thinkcircular and start seeing waste as a valuable resource that can be repurposed and reused.

‘We hope that this project, which demonstrates ‘circular economy thinking’ being applied in a practical way, will be seen as an example of how repurposing materials makes more sense than simply discarding them,’ says Francesco.

Most importantly, we hope that it’s a social project that brings value to those people with a refugee background who get involved.