Born “surrounded on every side by this tough, safe, clean material which human thought has created”, the “plastic man” grows up with clothes, cars and crafting materials made from plastics, until finally “he sinks into his grave hygienically enclosed in a plastic coffin”. This is how Victor Yarsley and Edward Couzens foresaw the ‘Plastic Age’ in the final chapter of Plastics, published by Penguin in 1941. And many people shared this heady enthusiasm – in the late 1930s, ‘cellophane’ was voted the third most beautiful word in the English language. Initially developed as a replacement for dwindling natural materials such as ivory and tortoiseshell, celluloid promised a democracy that Bakelite, the first fully synthetic plastic, delivered upon. Everything from light switches to radio cabinets carried its portentous logo – the mathematical symbol for infinity. Wartime material shortages drove innovation and although plastics were initially expensive and marketed for durability, by 1956 industry leaders started to push for low-cost production at volumes that could only be driven by disposability. Single-use plastics were born. Despite their bad reputation, we use them for surgical masks, lifesaving injections and blood bags. But do plastics have a place in today’s furniture industry?
Since industrial production really got going in the 1950s, we have produced 8.3 billion tonnes of plastics – and as much between 2000 and 2010 as we did in the entire 20th century. 90% of that comprises virgin plastics made from coal, natural gas and petroleum – non-renewable resources and major contributors to climate change. It is often argued that plastics are a byproduct of the fossil fuel industry, using only 6% of those resources. However, as green energy gains traction, the International Energy Agency predicts that plastics will become the largest driver of demand for oil. Given that 2024 was the first full year during which global temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels (the limit that all but three countries worldwide agreed not to breach as part of the Paris Climate Change Agreement in 2015), the use of virgin plastic in furniture is hard to defend. "There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ materials – only the wrong material used in the wrong context," says head of sustainability for PaperShell. “That said, I do believe designers should have the courage to dismiss traditional, virgin petrochemical plastics outright.” And Jan Boelen, artistic director of Atelier LUMA agrees: “Plastic is a fantastic material with enormous quality, but it’s applied in the wrong situations. We should treat it as a very precious material and only use it when absolutely necessary – for example saving lives.”
However, just 9% of plastic has ever been recycled. Another 12% has been incinerated, which means that 79% – some 6.5 billion tonnes – is still with us, in landfill or in the wider environment. Either way, much of it ends up in the sea and estimates suggest that by 2050 the ocean will contain more plastic by weight (and most plastics are pretty light) than fish. Plastic has now been detected in human blood, placentas and breast milk, and marine mammals and seabirds are dying at a rate of one every 30 seconds due to plastic. Is there a role for the furniture industry to make use of the plastic that already exists and curb some of this damage?
Many furniture brands believe so. Swiss furniture company Vitra has replaced virgin plastic with recycled in design classics such as the Uten.Silo, the Tip Ton Chair and Eames Plastic Chairs. “Vitra’s goal is to replace all virgin plastic parts with recycled material where possible by 2030,” says chief design officer Christian Grosen Rasmussen. “This means that we will switch to recycled material on hundreds of parts annually.” They have also developed the first economical, energy efficient and recyclable (although not yet recycled) polyurethane foam in collaboration with German chemical company BASF. Upholstery fabric specialist Camira has a range of fabrics made from recycled polyester and their Oceanic fabric tackles ocean plastic head-on using SEAQUAL yarn – each metre of fabric contains plastic from 26 ocean-sourced or landfill-bound bottles. “It’s one small drop in the mission to clean both the earth and its oceans, but this is post-consumer recycled polyester with a purpose,” says Camira’s sustainability engineer, Paraskevi Fotoglou.
However, recycling takes energy and produces carbon, and the quality degrades each time, so is what amounts to ‘downcycling’ really the answer? “Recycling is an illusion. It's not a long-term solution – it’s just a procrastination of the real problem,” says Boelen. “I can't find a single argument in favour of plastic, even recycled plastic." Is it time for a more radical approach?
Arper is going a step further, albeit only on one product so far (more are planned) and has created the Catifa Carta, with which the plastic shell of their Catifa Chair has been replaced with a bio-material called PaperShell. PaperShell is made from sawdust and wood chips – waste from forestry and agriculture – bound with the hemicellulose lost in pulp production to create ‘reverse engineered wood’ which is into a high-performance and long-lasting shell. At the end of its life, PaperShell can be turned into biochar using pyrolysis – a low oxygen burning process that prevents carbon release – or broken down using mycelium cultures. Either way, it is returned to the soil as a nutrient. “Giving plastic a second life in a chair isn’t inherently wrong, but is it the smartest application?” asks Hardt. “Especially if, once that chair reaches its end of life, we’re stuck with the same old disposal problems. We need to ask ourselves whether we could be designing for better materials and better systems."
But London-based design studio Pearson Lloyd has found that using recycled plastic can do more than just take plastic out of the environment – it can reduce the carbon footprint and production waste and increase the recycled content and circularity of a product. “To make seating, you bring a comfortable surface up to a certain height and that’s usually done with a plywood box,” explains co-founder Tom Lloyd. “Wood is a great material – trees absorb carbon and you can capture that carbon by turning wood into long-lasting furniture. But plywood is 25% glue, which makes it very difficult to recycle. It’s a sheet material so waste is inevitable, and although there is some debate about whether you can make plywood into more plywood, most of it gets chipped and burnt.” For Revo, their modular seating collection for Profim, Pearson Lloyd specified recycled expanded polypropylene (REPP) instead, reducing the product weight by about 40% and the carbon footprint by 6% in production and 40% in transportation. Its modular design gives it longevity, and at the end of its life it can be entirely disassembled for remanufacture or recycling.
Sean Sutcliffe, co-founder of British furniture maker Benchmark, remains unconvinced by any of the arguments in favour of plastic. “We take a holistic approach, and take into account the environmental impact, but also the health impact,” he says. “The problem with upholstery foam in particular is the need for fire retardants – you’re essentially trying to make an oil-based product non-flammable and that requires some really nasty chemicals.” Benchmark uses solid wood and has collaborated with Naturalmat to create a replacement for upholstery foam that combines coir, latex and sheep’s wool. Wool is naturally fire-retardant, and the latex is impregnated with graphite – a natural and non-carcinogenic material – to meet fire regulations. “Plus, everything that we use is grown and therefore can be regrown” he says.
Boelen proposes an even more radical approach that not only advocates for the use of natural materials but also eliminates the carbon footprint of transport. “You produce locally, so you don't have to transport things,” he says, simply. “It's about changing the systems, not just the materials.” Bio-regional design involves using natural resources to meet local demand. “Materials are heavy and should stay local, people and ideas are light and should travel,” he explains. “You can use traditional industrial machines to make bioplastics from the leftovers of pressing of sunflower oil for example. And scaling that is simple. I give you my recipe – how I make something using a certain resource – and you find an equivalent crop near you, in the same way that food recipes travel around the world and are adapted to suit what’s available locally. This is how we create not only a sustainable, but a rich, complex and diverse world that is inspiring and surprising instead of one that is standardised and homogenised.”
While recycled plastics certainly offer short-term solutions, they do not eliminate the fundamental issues. Forward-thinking designers and manufacturers are beginning to embrace regenerative materials, local production and circular systems that move beyond the limits of petrochemical dependency. The iconic furniture designs of the 20th century were inspired by new material innovations of the time. As global temperatures rise and plastic pollution mounts, the furniture industry has a choice – we can continue to make incremental harm reductions with business as usual, or we can face the challenges of the 21st century head-on, exploring new materials and processes and creating our own legacy.
This article is taken from Anima Issue 3, to purchase a copy or subscribe head here