A recycling initiative that diverts 3.5 million PET plastic bottles from landfills each year, and turns it into an attractive and timeless design, sounds almost unreal but is exactly what Coca-Cola and Emeco have managed to do.
The 111 Navy Chair® uses 111 plastic bottles, 65% recycled PET plastic and 35% glass fibre and pigment to create a chair which works to draw attention to environmental problems and the Coca-Cola Company’s commitment to help find solutions.
With the idea to keep consumer waste out of landfills by upcycling it into something that does not need to be recycled for a long time, Coca-Cola’s 111 Navy Chair will never go out of style.
USA-based manufacturer Emeco became famous for their 1006 Navy Chair, first made for the US Navy in 1944, with a lifetime warranty. For the 111 Navy Chair they took the classic 1006 design but used new innovative materials to create the first structural product made from PET.
The production process uses a robotic four-part moulding tool to replicate exactly the square sections of the original chair. Each chair takes just three minutes to mould with production easily scalable to other regions. The six colours used in the designs also pass ecological benchmarks since there are no heavy metals added. Three of the six colours, snow, flint gray and red, are also guaranteed for outdoor use. At the end of the chair 30-plus years life expectancy, it can be recycled to make new chairs again.
