Source: Green Report. \”Cartonul, transformat în mobilă și accesorii sustenabile\” (Cardboard transformed into sustainable furniture and accessories). Author: Oana Racheleanu
Published August 18, 2017
For designers, cardboard has evolved beyond its primary role as a packaging material. They have transformed it into a recyclable (and sometimes recycled) raw material that can become an armchair, a sofa, a chandelier, a baby crib, or a desk.
Foldo: Furniture from 100% recyclable cardboard
The team at Foldo creates cardboard furniture that is easy to assemble, modular, durable, easy to handle, and 100% recyclable.
\”Easy to transport and assemble, the utility of Foldo products becomes visible when you have to move; suddenly, instead of a massive armchair weighing dozens of kilograms, you move a few pieces of cardboard that weigh as much as a bottle of water. Instead of transporting all sorts of chandeliers that risk breaking, you take a few \’slices\’ of cardboard that you can place on the car dashboard,\” they write on their website.
The Foldo product list includes lighting fixtures, armchairs, sofas, and even children\’s cribs. For example, their single-person armchair is made exclusively of cardboard, without screws or adhesives, and is designed with a honeycomb structure intended to withstand over 150 kg. Their sofa can support 300 kg, while the children\’s crib weighs only 3 kg and can support up to 90 kg.
Tubatect: Shelves and desks from cardboard tubes
Adrian Ibric, the founder of Tubatect, began collecting cardboard tubes from plotters in 2007 and shortly thereafter started producing furniture from them.
The results include shelves, coffee tables, frames for standard tables or desks, atypical or storage frames, chairs, armchairs, stools, gift holders, or smaller objects—all crafted from 100% manually recycled cardboard tubes.
The furniture is constructed by modularly joining cardboard tubes without glue. These tubes come from remnants of paper rolls, cardboard, fabrics, carpets, rugs, and kitchen foils recovered from paper collection centers, printing or copy-plotting centers, profile factories, textile or carpet shops, and design firms.
\”[…] Our main goals are to use the resources we have efficiently through the creative reuse of waste resulting from our company\’s other activities and thus reduce the amount of material thrown into the trash,\” those at Tubatect stated.
Fodi: The desk accessory
If you have already purchased cardboard furniture, it would be a shame to place something plastic on such a table. Instead, you can buy an accessory that functions as a stand for books, tablets, phones, or even laptops.
It is made of thin, one-millimeter cardboard based on an origami structure, which provides it with stability. Fodi is water-resistant and can even be used as a bookmark.