Plastic Stools You Can Compost? These Furniture Designers Are Experimenting With Biomaterials

During Miami Art Week in December, a curated jumble of stools greeted visitors at the entrance of the the event’s emerging designer showcase. One could imagine the colorful, playful, and stackable seating decorating a poolside cabana; at the event, they soaked up the Florida sun and changed color with the UV radiation level, thanks to a reactive "skin." They looked like they were made of plastic, and they are—just not the petroleum-based kind. Instead, Slovakia studio Crafting Plastics used Nuatan, a proprietary biomaterial the firm says is entirely renewable and compostable.

Nuatan is made of polyhydroxy alkaloids, which microorganisms produce naturally in sugars and starches via fermentation. Crafting Plastics founders Miroslav Král and Vlasta Kubušová grow it in a lab (though it can be made in your kitchen), and use it just like traditional plastic; they create injection molds, 3D print, and make pliable sheets. The studio emphasizes that it’s non-toxic, and can biodegrade or be reused when a product reaches the end of its life, should that time ever come.

"We are expecting our products and furniture pieces to endure generations," explains Kubušová. If a consumer were to tire of one of the studio’s stools before it wore out, she says, the piece could be hammered or shred into smaller parts and deposited at a facility that offers industrial composting. It could also be heat-pressed into a sheet and used to make a new piece, completing the loop of circular design. Some onus would still fall on the consumer, then, to act responsibly, as with disposing of batteries, for example.

Crafting Plastics is one of several companies innovating with biomaterials in an effort to make furniture that doesn’t have to end up in a landfill. Others are trying out seating, lighting, and entire living spaces that similarly stress a non-toxic, circular existence. At 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen last June, local firm Natural Material Studio decorated a space in dreamy, semi-translucent textiles and foam furniture composed of protein-based polymers, natural softeners, and chalk. The installation’s malleable and compostable nature was a response to rampant consumerism within the interior design world.

Those exploring biomaterials in place of ones that are carbon hungry, toxic, or just poorly manufactured, are often reacting to the furniture industry’s negative impacts on the planet. According to the latest data from the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans discarded 12.1 million tons of furniture in 2018, a figure that represents more than four percent of all durable goods waste. Of that load, 80 percent went directly into a landfill, where they may continue to leech forever chemicals into the soil. The fast furniture market is largely to blame; badly built sofas from DTC brands like Wayfair aren’t helping.

Shu Bertrand, chair of the industrial design and furniture programs at San Francisco’s California College of the Arts (CCA), says designers must take the lead. "If we’re producers of products, then we have to be responsible. There’s just no other way," she declares. "The first thing I banned for student use in our studios is anything that is petroleum-based."