Recycled PlayStations Have Front-Row Seat in Reee Chair Design - Design News
Pli Design Ltd. originally designed the Reee chair for the Eden Project, a massive greenhouse and environmental center in England, using recycled plastic. After delivering 50 chairs using a single source, they began thinking about the potential for a much larger manufacturing vision.
“Pli began talking to Sony, the maker of the PlayStation, about recycling opportunities to expand its Reee chair vision. Sony, like all electronics equipment manufacturers, was dealing with the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment regulation, a European directive that mandates manufacturers of electronics equipment dispose of the equipment in a responsible manner. As a result of such legislation, Sony and others were looking at options for disposing of outdated equipment to help them remain in compliance, and Pli saw an opportunity to make the Reee chair go mainstream.”
“Thanks to Pli’s earlier closed-loop recycling experience with the Eden Project, Sony was game to come onboard as its single supplier. Having a single source for plastic was critical to engineering the Reee chair on a mass production basis”
“When using virgin plastic, it’s incredibly reliable to know what the performance is - what temperature it can be molded at, etc…,” Pett says. “Not so with recycled plastic, which tends to be mixed together a lot. You’ve got to find a way to manipulate the supply chain so you acquire a simple, pure source of a recycled product.” In addition to providing a more reliable engineering material, a single source of recycled plastic also played to Pli’s sustainable focus by creating a shorter supply chain and lowering carbon costs, he says.”
Other details in the article above include its design for disassembly, replaceable parts, and material minimalization.
The current process for one Ree chair uses plastic from nine Sony PlayStation 2 consoles, thus diverting 2.4kg of plastic from a landfill.
Pli plans to deliver 3,000 chairs in the coming year, which would be comprised of 7.5 tons of recycled ABS plastic.
