Coca-Cola and Emeco Create One-of-a-Kind Chair Made from 111 Recycled Plastic Bottles
Posted on | April 13, 2010 |
111 Navy Chair™ Debuts This Week at Milan Furniture Show
The Coca-Cola Company and Emeco, a leading furniture manufacturer, have combined their iconic products, the Coca-Cola contour bottle package and the famous Navy® Chair, to create a new chair made from at least 111 recycled plastic bottles. The aptly named “111 Navy Chair™” debuts this week at the 2010 Salone Internazionale del Mobile, one of the top furniture trade shows in the world held here on April 14-19.
Modeled after the original aluminium Emeco Navy Chair (#1006) designed in 1944 for the U.S. Navy, each 111 Navy Chair contains a mix of 60 percent rPET plastic (recycled polyethylene terephthalate plastic) and a special combination of other materials including pigment and glass fiber for strength. It is estimated that more than three million PET plastic bottles will be repurposed annually for the production of 111 Navy Chairs.
“The 111 Navy Chair is a reflection of our commitment to sustainability, constant innovation and originality in design,” said Kate Dwyer, Group Director, Worldwide Licensing, The Coca-Cola Company. “This latest addition to our line of rPET licensed merchandise underscores the fact that Coca-Cola bottles are valuable recyclables. It is another step in our vision to recover and reuse all of our bottles and cans.”
The rPET content in each chair is sourced from the world’s largest plastic bottle-to-bottle recycling plant that began operation in 2009 in Spartanburg, South Carolina in the United States through a partnership between The Coca-Cola Company and United Resource Recovery Corp.
The chairs will be available for sale in June 2010 in select retail locations worldwide and can also be ordered by sending an email to coca-cola@emeco.net. 111 Navy Chairs are available in six colors: Coca-Cola Red, Snow, Flint, Grass, Persimmon and Charcoal.
“When Coca-Cola approached me with this project I jumped on it,” said Gregg Buchbinder, Chairman of Emeco. “Although reengineering a core product is a significant investment for us, I was excited about the impact of reusing the PET from about three million plastic bottles a year. That’s a lot of bottles and a lot of chairs. The new chair is the strongest, and most beautiful we can make. We’ve turned something many people throw away into something you want and can keep for a long, long time.”
Coca-Cola first launched rPET merchandise in 2007 as a way to inspire people to recycle by showing them how PET bottles can be transformed into products for everyday use. rPET merchandise includes fashionable t-shirts, bags, caps, notebooks and now a chair made of recycled plastic bottles. Each item indicates the number of plastic bottles used to create it. The rPET merchandise line is just one of many sustainability initiatives by The Coca-Cola Company and is a testament of the Company’s long history in innovation.
About Emeco
Emeco was founded in 1944 to make all-aluminum chairs for the US Navy. Gregg Buchbinder purchased the company in 1998 and began a friendship and association with the renowned French architect, Philippe Starck, creating a series of products that united Emeco’s historic manufacturing capabilities with Starck’s classic designs. In 2000, Starck’s Hudson chair for Emeco won the GOOD DESIGN Award and was inducted into the permanent design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 2004, Emeco collaborated with the American architect Frank Gehry on Superlight, a chair that utilizes aluminum’s ability to be both strong and flexible. Gehry’s chair won another GOOD DESIGN award in 2004 and is included in collections at MoMA, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Pinakothek der Modern in Munich. In 2006 Emeco teamed with BMW Designworks to launch “1951” an inexpensive stacking chair based on an out-of-production Emeco model from 1951. In 2007 Emeco’s collaboration with Norman Foster “20-06” won another GOOD DESIGN award, as well as a 2007 Spark Design Award and the 2008 Baden-Württemberg International Design Award for environmentally progressive new products.. In 2008, Emeco launched the Nine-O Collection by Ettore Sottsass – the last design by Sottsass who died at the age of 90, and in 2009 Emeco introduced Morgans by Andrée Putman, designed for the restored Morgans Hotel in NYC.
From a workforce of 15 craftsmen in 1998, Emeco has grown five times and recently installed a second manufacturing shift for the first time in 25 years. Emeco has made over 1,000,000 1006 Navy® chairs since 1944 and now sells its furniture in 30 countries. For more information, www.emeco.net.
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