The term “circular economy”, where one person’s waste is another’s raw material, was coined in 1988. By that stage Finline Furniture in Co Laois had been practising it for a decade.
The company is run by the brothers Killian and Ciaran Finane and was set up by their parents, Kieran and Bridget, in 1979.
There are an estimated 500,000 Finline sofas in circulation and, from the beginning, the business offered a service that would allow customers to bring back their old Finline suite to have it re-covered, rather than throw it out and buy a new one.
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In recent years it has expanded its offering, launching a range called Revive, which buys the sofa back for a
