the cardboard chair is alive!

I made a chair out of recycled cardboard. The original design I used which lacked the use of any type of adhesive didn't work so I ended up making my own additions in order for someone to actually be able to sit in the chair. Overall it took way, way longer than I ever would have guessed and, on a side note, cardboard is a lot messier than you would guess. The chair isn't the most beautiful piece of furniture but it works and it could probably be modified to look better. My personal conclusion: if I can do it, anyone can! And the additions I made to make it more stable were kind of spur of the moment in attempt to salvage all the hours I had spent making the original design. The fact that my additions worked was very exciting for me! I ended up using 2 pieces of just regular tape (not duct tape or anything heavy duty) which is more then I wanted to, but was because I had to! I kind of cheated by using corner and end pieces that were already glued together, but if the glue has already been used then you might as well use it again! I think the main point was to try to avoid unnecessary use of more bad things for the environment. Even though it took quite a bit of work, I think the use of cardboard furniture is definitely possible, especially if you added adhesives into the equation. With limitless time and resources, this could definitely be a profitable business because you wouldn't really have to buy any of your raw materials.

Just to explain how easy it is to get a car full of cardboard: I originally talked to a store owner of a local mattress store and was going to return later in the week when they got their shipments in to take their cardboard. Unfortunately, the manager's wife was in the hospital when I returned and they had already thrown out the cardboard. I found cardboard somewhere else within 20 minutes - all I did was drive around the backs of stores around Wolf Ranch until I found people unloading and taking apart boxes. They happily helped me pack my car full of cardboard and even offered to give me bubble wrap and all of their other trash. This is probably because the store has to pay for every dumpster they fill up so they are grateful to have some one take away from their dumpster usage! Anyways, the point is, I'm pretty sure anybody with some resourcefulness could do this type of project and probably even on a larger scale then just a chair. The nice thing about making something physical is that at least you have something you can see to show for you efforts.

Well, what are you waiting for? Replace all your furniture with reusable materials! =)