Sustainable furniture: It was once a yogurt Cup

The sustainability of your products? To do this, the furniture industry was, primarily, the durability is the keyword. A well-designed, high-quality subject matter must be sustainable per se, because he is a long time in use. The resources used for it, pay for themselves over time. Especially in the case of manufacturers of furniture classics that was a popular Argument. And it is true, too: their products rarely go broke, continue to be inherited, hardly lose value.

But that is no longer enough for today: Can be saved in the production of resources? The materials are environmentally acceptable, or should they be replaced? And what happens to a piece of furniture, when its "life time" is but once to the end? All these questions remained unanswered. But now the Zeitgeist has reached the furniture industry: sustainability has developed into a major Trend, what is also evident from the fact that some of the well-known car manufacturer in the serial production of chairs made from recycled plastic.

The Italian brands Magis and Kartell, for example, have new chairs from recycled plastic in the program. Vitra from Switzerland, brings his successful rocking chair, Tip Ton, in a Version made of recycled plastic on the market. And even the Berlin-based Indie-brand objects of our days (OUT) in this the fall of a Monobloc, a chair made entirely of one Material. News from Fritz Hansen, Arper, the seat consist of at least cups made from recycled plastic. Other companies will follow.

"Today, we have to do it with a very conscious, young society in a global context, the sustainability and Ecology go very close," says Hermann August EGGER, designed for OUT the distinctive X-Chair-Wheat. "The industry is well advised, if you are eco-efficient, recyclable and sustainable materials in the spotlight."

Use what is already available

It is a nice idea of sitting on a chair, by the time a bottle of Shampoo, a noodle packaging, or a yogurt Cup. As in the case of Tip Ton from Vitra, made from recycled content in the Yellow Sacks. Or of a chair, consisting of the waste in the own furniture production, such as the Bell Chair, Konstantin Grcic with Magis has developed. What is produced in the factory inevitably remains and the Committee is so use to something. The plastic material is finally in the world. To look better, the garbage in the sense of the circular economy as a raw material and further process it.

But it's not that simple, unfortunately. As is so often the supposedly sustainable consumption, it becomes more complex the closer you look. Whether it is "Bullshit" is, to the use of recycled plastic as the Designer Richard Hutten, and of the design expert Jan Boelen independently announce, is quite controversial in the industry. But the harsh Statements shed light on the problem: The Material cementing only our dependence on petroleum-based plastics and associated industry, says Boelen. He calls for a "systemic change" towards alternative, biodegradable materials, for example from algae.