KOHLER: Waste Is Simply a Lack of Imagination

You won’t find Monty Stauffer behind a desk. This industrial designer spends his days exploring our factories, sifting through drains and waste bins, in search of something he can use—something destined for far more than the landfill.

KOHLER WasteLAB® takes landfill-bound materials left over from the manufacturing process and converts them into functional products of style and beauty.

Through this exploration, we're able to take a step toward building a sustainable circular economy, one in which we reuse, rethink, and repurpose our waste streams to create beautiful, thoughtful products. From 2019 through 2021, sales of KOHLER WasteLAB tile have diverted more than 54,000 pounds of waste from landfills, exemplifying Kohler's commitment to achieving net-zero waste to landfill by 2035.
 
On Earth Day and beyond, we celebrate Monty's passion for innovative sustainability, his imagination for transforming manufacturing waste into beautiful products, and his pursuit of a better future.
 
Learn more about his work in the KOHLER WasteLAB.