Recycled Butter Stool

posted on September 14 by DesignAddict.

Australian design brand DesignByThem have released a stool made from 100% post consumer recycled plastic. 'Butter stool' designed by Sarah Gibson and Nicholas Karlovasitis, is made almost entirely of recycled milk containers.
The designers believe that there is a large difference between designing products that can be recycled and products that are made from recycled materials. Many products can be recycled however the majority use virgin plastic, essentially adding more plastic to a saturated recycling system. Aside from the sustainable attributes of the product, the stool remains extremely robust, being UV stable and water proof. Sarah, who also lectures Ecodesign at the University of Technology Sydney, believes that the functionality of sustainable products should not be compromised. The stool can be hand assembled and is designed from a single piece of material which folds together to become rigid. The stools can also be stacked.
Nicholas and Sarah have been collaborating together for the past three years and are the creative minds behind DesignByThem. They have plans to expand the Butter range to include a complimentary table and a shelving system.

tags: furniture, sustainable, outdoor, plastic, new products

2 comments so far:

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Nicolette, on September 15:

You would never have guessed this is made from recycled milk containers. Looks amazing.

Koen, on September 15:

There are many reasons why I like this project. It is well intentioned when it comes to the use of recycled plastics; it is simple and serves a purpose. There are also a few reasons why I regret that this kind of projects is not pushed further than what is seen on the blog. There are two ways of making this product. One is a low investment procedure in which you use extruded and calendared sheets of recycled polyethylene plastic and you cut both the shape and the living hinges with a CNC cutter (probably a 3-4 mm mill for the cutting and a V shaped end mill for the hinges). The other is to make a rather large mould and injection mould the piece with recycled polyethylene. I suspect that what we see is the result of the first technology. The description states that the product’s weight is 4,5 kg., which is a lot of plastic for a piece like this. It indicates that not much has been done to optimize the product by using as little material as possible. My guess is that one could make an equally strong product with less than half this amount of material.
Another indication is the price…similar to a PP Werner Panton Chair… 4,5 kg of virgin polyethylene are worth around $ 12.00 U.S. How do you get to over $200.00 is a mystery to me. It certainly puts it out of reach for most users. One could argue that this is a low investment start and that a good response from the market would allow the designers or manufacturers or both to justify a much larger investment that would allow them to make the chair for a reasonable cost. In my experience this could be manufactured for under $10.00 US. This progression from low to higher investment is a reasonable argument but requires the early version to be feasible in the second technology; which is not the case. Generally I love these kinds of products but I always have similar regrets: the original technology and thus the pricing does not allow the product to take off and reach the potential of a real solution.

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