I love food and I finish everything on my plate. In other words, I don’t "do" leftovers. My mother, on the other hand, has a refrigerator packed with a small army of Tupperware containers. Each one holds a fragment of this and a portion of that. She loves leftovers.

Fortunately, in the world of green design, my mother and I can both fit in. In fact, the Brussels-based design company, Rotor, would hire her in one gone-green minute.

Rotor was created by four colleagues who believe that waste can and should have a second life. Left-overs, in this case, refer to industrial waste that will be used again in a similar form to the one for which the material was originally designated.

Rotor built this kitchen cabinetry using the leftover laser-cut plywood that a die-cutting company used as plates for punching out the shape of unfolded cardboard boxes that eventually would become luxury goods packaging. (Got that?)

More than one life is the point - and although it may not be the kitchen of your dreams, I’m inspired by their creativity and determination to design outside the green box. But I'm still not eating leftovers.

Image: Rotor