a stool made of one month household waste by charlotte allen

to use design as a tool to help solve social issues, UK-based multidisciplinary designer charlotte allen collects her own household waste to build useful pieces. after a month of piling recyclable materials, allen has created ‘prolong’, a stool made of used plastic and paper.

‘I gave myself the brief ‘prolong’ where I wanted to prolong people’s relationship with their waste,’ explains allen. after one month of collecting, she had over 50 plastic bottles and an abundance of paper and cardboard.

by using special techniques and presses in the workshop at her university, the designer accomplished a 60-centimeters tall kitchen stool for her house, returning it back to its context. the top is made of HDPE (high-density polyethylene) plastics which is used in milk and shampoo bottles, while the legs are created by compressing paper and cardboard together with PVA (polyvinyl alcohol).

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.