In the last two weeks Pli’s latest product the Reee chair has gone into full scale production. It has taken two years product development to get to this point with the help of many, many people and organisations, from the designers Sprout to the subcontracted parts manufacturers and London Remade who supported the injection mould tooling.

None of this help and advice has gone to waste - the finished product is radically different from our very first conceptions of a 100% post-consumer recycled plastic seat. And yet the original idea remains exactly the same - a 100% post-consumer recycled plastic chair seat and back on a simple tubular frame.

Watch out for announcements regarding retail locations, launch parties and contract deliveries in the coming days and weeks - we have some exciting news to share - but in the meantime we are all just glad to be in production, frame by frame, part by part, diverting recycled material from landfill or down-cycling and using it for a high-quality consumer product instead.

I’m interested in the Eden Project’s Waste Neutral initiative, which has formed the basis of the giant Cornish greenhouse and education centre’s waste and procurement strategy over the last couple of years. In fact the conferences and discussions we have attended at Eden have inspired us at Pli to think more systematically about how we can help ourselves and our customers, to balance the waste we produce with the waste we might be able to reuse.

It’s a tricky issue: there are so many sources of waste and it all goes off in different directions for disposal. Just about the only point where it could all come together to be quantified and evaluated is in our own home - hardly the ideal place. Sometimes my own kitchen feels like it’s overflowing with all the waste I’m carefully separating as I go, often to cram a lot of it back together in a big blue plastic box for Southwark Council to take away. I could hardly say I’m on top of it all.

So I was fascinated to learn in Time Magazine about RecycleBank - a pleasing example of some entrepreneurial person putting himself in my shoes and working out what he can do to help me out.

Read more »

The concept of found objects has been used in art since Marcel Duchamp’s signed urinal. The artist David Mach uses coat hangers and the idea of up-cycling - taking low quality/priced objects and turning them into high quality/priced objects - to create some incredibly inspiring pieces. I don’t think sustainability was on his mind when he sculpted them, they are simply works of art; he even may have used new coat hangers. However, he does show how creativity, talent, and I suspect a lot of patience, can turn something as mundane and disposable as a coat hanger into something quite spectacular.

Read more »

Here is a cool use of old paper-backs by UK Designer Lucy Norman…

Lucy Norman’s usage of recycled materials is key to her art. She has focused on designing a range of products under the slogan “Rethink, Reuse, Rebook”, combining a concern for the environment and the reuse of waste in a way that is both stylish and commercial. Another variation on green and re-cycled chandeliers, this one is made of recycled books which cannot be sold as no-one will buy them. Ordinarily they would have to be land filled which is costly and detrimental to the environment. Instead she created “Light Reading”, a quirky (and flame retardant) chandelier made by folding pages of books and hanging them around a ceiling light. The Paperback Partition is also made from unwanted books, and is an aesthetically pleasing room divider, providing good heat and acoustic insulation.

Here is the Link via Treehugger