The brief was to design something to help combat an issue in the worlds environment. I decided to tackle on the issue of pollution. Plastic bottles, caps and lids make up almost 20% of the pollution in the world’s oceans. Recycling HDPE has been done before but I wanted to do it myself. I wanted to take an ordinary object and show how this can be implemented.
I decided to collect laundry detergent bottles from local laundromats to create the top of my stool. I went with bamboo wood, as it is a strong wood, is sustainable due to its quick growth and can be used outside.
After collecting two trash bags full of bottles, I had to cut down the bottles into small bits to then bake them and apply pressure to them so that they could be tightly squeezed into one piece. From there, I used the CNC machine to level the surfaces and then to make what looks like a conglomerate of plastic into a nice and even circular top for the stool. I then used plastic shreds to fill in any blemishes in the piece. I was lucky enough to source solid bamboo cutting boards from Ikea that were the perfect dimensions.
This CAD Drawing shows the dimensions used in the stool, as well as the different components which are the two bamboo legs and the top made from recycled HDPE.
