Reee chairs stacking 10 high

The new frame design of the Reee chair allows you to stack them 10 high. The 100% recycled plastic seat nests with the high-tensile steel tube frame so the chairs don’t roll forward off the stack, making it very stable.

In line with manual handling guidelines, we recommend that you do not attempt to move more than 4-5 chairs at a time, in a stack, if you are moving them on your own without mechanical assistance. We can supply chair trolleys that allow you to move a stack of 10 Reee chairs safely.

The footprint of 10 Reee chairs stacked together is only 12% bigger than a single chair, so they are very space-efficient for storage and handling.

Other benefits of the Reee chair:

• Competitive price
• Comfortable ergonomic design
• 100% recycled plastic from computer games consoles
• Made in UK
• Designed for disassembly
• Easy to repair and refurbish
• Available in three frame colours: black, stone grey and light blue

You can find out all about the Reee chair’s specifications here.
You can read about the background to the unique source of recycled plastic in the Reee chair here.
Contact Pli to get a quote or find a dealer that can supply your home or contract needs.

Reusing existing furniture is an interesting topic for a furniture manufacturer to be talking to its customers about. If we encourage you to try and achieve MR Credit 3.2: Materials Reuse—furniture and furnishings we are turning away business, because to gain the LEED point for MR Credit 5 30% of your furniture and furnishing budget should be spent on salvaged, refurbished or used products. Here at Pli we realise due to environmental issues the way furniture companies do business has to change, so we are trying to come up with our own ideas before we are regulated to into a way of working that may not work for our business.

Wrap & Whitechapel refurbishment diagram

Using second hand products is all well and good but in some cases, but finding appropriate salvaged, refurbished or used products can pose more problems than solutions. This LEED credit requires a bit of long-term thinking. If you think one step ahead you may get the answer, where the new furniture you buy for your current projects becomes the refurbished furniture you supply for future projects. The next issue is to make the used or refurbish furniture complement all the new furniture your future put project.

If you can see the benefit in this thinking our products are for you, as they are built to be refurbished into “as new” products at the end of their life. This means you get “as new” products as well as qualifying for a LEED point. During refurbishment you also have the opportunity to change paint colours and even add after market accessories like seat covers so you can respond to the latest trends or match new products with out having to throw away perfectly good furniture. Think of us more as your furniture service provider rather than distributor.

All of our products are designed so in someway they can be refurbished or serviced. We will start with the Wrap table as it is most refurbish-able product of the range.

Wrap

• Repaint-able steel surfaces – The powdercoated finishes allows you to recoat the table top as much as you want. If you also want a new colour to match your new interior now is the time to do it.
• Solid FSC Ash components – The leg and end details are only quick sand and oil away from being as good as new.
• Durable OSB core – This durable core material can be put straight back into service after inspection and any damaged holes are easily repaired.
• Fastening and fixings – A small but essentially part of Wrap will transfer easily between tables

Reee Chair

• 100% Recycled plastic seat and back – Each seat or back panel is made up of 14 ribs. If any one of those ribs is damaged they can be replaced on-site. Any damaged parts will then go back into the recycling stream to be made back into new Reee chair parts.
• High-tensile steel tube frame – Most frames should be able to go back into service with a wipe down. Any paint damage can easily be touched up or the frame can be completely re-coated. Any frames damaged beyond that will simply be recycled.
• Accessories – There are also soon to be available covers for chair that will completely transform the chairs creating a whole new upholstered look.

Whitechapel collection

• Solid Bamboo panels – The oiled bamboo surface needs to be treated with more respect that the powdericoated surface on Wrap, but we chose an oiled surface because it is easily repaired and doesn’t have to be completely striped back before re coating.
• Repaint-able steel legs – The the legs on Whitechapel tables are easily repainted but most of gthe time they will only need a quick wipe down.

So with a little bit of forward thinking we can help your future projects earn LEED points at a fraction of the cost without having to compromise on style or quality….. best of all we will never see any of our furniture being needlessly buried in a landfill.

In the UK each year DEFRA studies have shown the UK construction industry is the largest producer of waste in England.

…The Government’s Waste Strategy for England 2007 identifies the good potential to increase resource efficiency in construction and reduce waste. The construction industry is a major source of waste in England, using the highest tonnage of solid material resources in any sector, over 400 million tonnes. The construction, demolition & excavation (CD&E) sector generates more waste in England than any other sector, and is the largest generator of hazardous waste, around 1.7 million tonnes…

As new regulations are created to curb this environmental catastrophe, construction waste is costing companies fortunes in disposal penalties.

To encourage participating developers to look more at the construction waste issue, LEED offers points to Material Reuse (called MR Credits). In future posts, I will talk how this relates directly to furniture reuse and refurbishment (MR Credit 3.2) and Recycled content (MR Credit 4), but before then I want to talk about how Pli offers a unique opportunity to help score points in MR Credit 3.1: Materials Reuse.

Pli’s Wrap table, which normally uses Oriented Strand Board (OSB) in its core, was designed to accept various board materials. This means it is possible to reuse a percentage of your own project’s construction waste in the manufacture of your new Wrap tables. We will work with your construction company to divert suitably selected waste boards back into the core of your tables. Those tables will be treated by Pli as new and covered by all our warranties.

Points earned from using the recycled board would naturally fall under MR Credit 4: Recycled Content. However, considering you are using recycled waste from your own construction site, we also think you have a strong case for including the tables in your points calculation for MR Credit 3.1.

BREEAM is the UK version of the US based LEED building certification system. BREEAM is a good system but does not have as much emphasis on interior furnishings. Fixed furnishing, such as fitted cabinets, falls under BREEAM but loose furniture does not. We want our products to make as much impact on a project as possible. Using BREEAM, our furniture would be purchased in the spirit of the project, but using LEED it makes a positive contribution to the overall interior project rating.

Example of the LEED points label for commercial interiors

The following posts in the “LEED & Pli” series will explain exactly how our products will earn points for your project. Over the certification process, Pli’s products can help towards 10 out of 100 possible LEED Commercial Interior certification points, and at least 1 of the 6 extra points available in the Innovation in Design section. (see LEED label above).

With the difference between the various levels of certification being 10 points, your choice of furniture could be the difference between just certifying your project and achieving silver, gold, or platinum certification. Considering the cost of the furniture compared to the total cost of some building projects, there are valuable points to be earned.

Over the next few months we will be looking at some of the different criteria involved, with regards to furniture and commercial interiors, in gaining LEED accreditation . The first step for you is to visit the LEED website, then download the LEED 2009 for Commercial Interiors Rating System and become familiar with the sections that will be relevant to the series. Below is an outline of the posts with relevant section heading and pages which you can refer back to the LEED 2009 for Commercial Interiors Rating System.

1. Why LEED? an introduction to the LEED system and why we choose it.
2. Material reuse. Using building waste in furniture manufacturer. MR Credit 3.1 page 31
3. Material reuse – Furniture & Furnishings. How refurbished furniture can save waste. MR Credit 3.2 page 32
4. Recycled content. Incorporating recycled material into new furniture. MR Credit 4 page 33
5. Regional materials – Manufacture. How using locally manufactured products help. MR Credit 5 page 34
6. Regional materials – Extraction , harvesting & recovery. Where does every component come from and why it is important. MR Credit 5 page 34
7. Rapidly renewable materials. The use of fasting growing material in furniture. MR Credit 6 page 35
8. Certified wood. The importance of using certified wood in your projects. MR Credit 7 page 36
9. Low-emitting Material. How furniture effects the air quality of your interior. IEQ Credit 4.5 page 52-53
10. Now & into the future. A summary of the series with a look at future directions for LEED & PLI.

For more information abut the Pumpkin film, visit the website at www.pumpkintv.co.uk or have a browse through their YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/ChannelPumpkin

Enter open source innovation; it is not the newest idea in town and it has been around in the scientific community for quite some time. And more recently, it was featured heavily in the community of software development which led to the creation of Creative Commons. It is a license for sharing data under a limited right of usage, which allows open sourcing to be done more securely. Nevertheless, this is a relatively new idea in the world of product design; an idea where innovation is developed by external sources, particularly the users themselves.

International license for open source sharing

This user-led innovation can ensure that the consumers get the products that they desire while also ensuring the manufacturers that their products will benefit the consumers. This contradicts the traditional way of design, where the designers will create, develop and make the products according to their observation and researches.  Eric Von Hippel, a leading expert in open source innovation, argues that the old mentality where ‘one size fits all’ can lead to a dissatisfied user, because the needs of each consumer are various. These users would also customize the product themselves and compromise the overall quality.

During my last 4 weeks with Pli, my internship was focused on how to apply open-source thinking to design. I have conducted various researches on the subject, looking at the benefits and the difficulties. I concluded that the project would have to be based on a working model in both the design process and the business process.

I separated the models into 4 categories based on how much control the designer has over the project:

• ‘Crowd sourcing’ is where the designer share the idea to the users and innovate through their responses
• ‘Playground’ is where the users adapt or create based on a template that the designer has given
• ‘User-Generated Content’ is where the users come up and present ideas for the designer to look at and produce
• ‘Democracy’ is where multiple users design something and collaboratively arrive at one consensus for the designer to produce

After some analysis, we felt that the ‘Playground’ route would work best with the values that Pli has, in term of sustainability and quality of the product. This method would allow Pli to demonstrate quickly with furniture design, how the users could interact, adapt and innovate with the template that Pli would give them. This also fits in well with Pli’s previous ‘09 intern project: design for take back and re-use. Christopher and me also felt that this method would ensure the high standard of furniture that Pli offered.

As of this writing, the project is ongoing and still developing but I will not be with Pli long enough to see the full implication of this idea. However I do hope that when this project is finished, it will produce some fantastic innovation by the users that would never cross my mind.

So what is a ‘carbon footprint’ anyway? Well, it is a measure of just one environmental impact, the amount of climate-changing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This means it is not a measure of any other ecological impacts, not that the others aren’t important, far from it: a good designer should take into consideration many impacts of their work to the surroundings. The reason that carbon is the first port of call is: it is a massive concern within society at the moment; the thought of global climate change and the effects of this are devastating. Yet a measure of total environmental impact, taking into consideration all contributions, would involve a very complex process. Let’s deal with one problem at a time shall we?

Sarah Semple hard at work

For the past month I have gathered all the information I can about Pli’s pieces of furniture, hoping to come up with conclusions about their carbon impact, and also about the company as a whole.

It takes limits to calculate carbon footprints; it is vital to have boundaries. I followed one limit of ‘cradle to gate’, which means to start at the very source, yet stop at the point the product is ready to sell. That means, for example, I went right back to the source of were the iron ore is extracted from the ground, yet stopped when steel sheets were assembled as part of a table and ready to be delivered.

I came across many good surprises in the results, and little not so good ones, all to be improved upon, here are just a few:

• In analysing the first and second versions of Pli’s Reee chair, the carbon footprint has reduced by 14% for the second version, which is great news.
• I found that the amount of cardboard packaging used (which is of course 100% recycled) may contribute over 2 tonnes of CO2 per year, if Pli make the sales of products they expect! Therefore the company are now considering changes in this area.
• Regarding the Whitechapel collection, these pieces have the lowest carbon footprint of all Pli’s furniture. Before I calculated this, we were concerned about the shipping of bamboo, but in fact shipping is extremely efficient and has little effect in comparison to transportation of materials by van or truck! If the bamboo was replaced with oak, which is transported through the UK by land, this is found to make only a 9% difference to the footprint. The small improvement in footprint may be counteracted environmentally by the timber choice itself, as it does not take into consideration the fact that bamboo is so fast growing; yet this is altogether another issue in terms of sustainable design.

The fact of the matter is that Pli are creating furniture that is honest, extremely considered and, what’s more, they are ready to get ahead of the game and consider options that may not of been so clear before. Pli are definitely well on their way with the ambition to lower their already astonishingly low carbon footprints! All to reduce the impact of one massively pressing environmental problem.

(Sarah Semple is studying design at the University of Northumbria. Sarah spent four weeks with Pli as an intern during May and June 2009. Sarah’s intern project was to implement the FIRA Footprinter application. Sarah’s comments and conclusions are entirely her own, but we at Pli have learned an enormous amount from Sarah’s project and we are actively implementing her recommendations. Christopher Pett)

Can the same patriotism that has led the masses to buy British pork convince the British furniture industry that they might sell some more tables if they make their product in the UK rather than abroad? With British design being so strong it seems a bit of a shame that we ship our manufacture off-shore to reduce the price rather than designing for UK industries.

Simon Andrews, designer of the Wrap table

Here at Pli we are making the most of the British manufacturing industry that has kept the majority of this country in pocket over the generations. We find we can build better relationships with UK manufacturers quite simply because we can easily visit them at the factory or call them up on the phone. This opens a whole new world of knowledge that can only be learned from years of manufacturing experience. Then, working together, we can optimise designs quicker and for less money than if we went further abroad.

The Wrap table is a great example of this successful approach. From our first meeting with Simon Andrews, designer of the Wrap table, in January 2008 he was able to develop this table in his free-time in under a year. This was mainly in part due to Simon’s great relationship with the sheet steel manufacturer of the surface parts. Ideas and tooling innovations were able to be shared quickly between all the parties so when problems came up it was a quick visit or a short phone call before a solution had been developed. Along with a shortening of the development time, it allowed Wrap to be made available at a competitive price rather than having a high “designer” price tag.

We thank Simon for all the work he has done on the Wrap project and we are proud to say the Wrap table is designed and made in the UK.