The Beautiful Furniture Designs that Generate ZERO Waste
HATTERN is an upcycling design studio based in South Korea. With the ZERO PER PROJECT, they aim to show that it is possible to make practical and beautiful products and furniture items that result in zero waste whatsover! Ambitious for sure, but how?
Today’s efficiency oriented manufacturing methods inevitably create massive amounts of material waste. The ZERO PER PROJECT offers an alternative to standard wasteful manufacturing processing by taking on the hybrid wood technique, which does not generate offcuts (the rough ends cut off when wood is sawn). Instead, the hybrid wood technique makes use of resin to secure the cracked ends of wood pieces after putting them into a mould. The combination of wood pieced fused with resin can be recreated into various forms of product, each a totally one of a kind design.
For the wood pieces that are too small to incorporate in the stool, HATTERN instead incorporate the chips into coasters. In this way, as they explain, ‘the waste produced from the making of the product is reduced to almost 0%’
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The pieces look fascinating but is this really a good direction in which to develop?
The manufacture of the resin will have a large waste and energy footprint, which is not mentioned. And the resin is probably hydrocarbon based and in any case highly synthesised, so it should remain available as part of the Technological Cycle while the wood off-cuts should be available to the Biological Cycle, according to Cradle to Cradle principles. Unfortunately, the two classes of material have been hybridised, meaning both will next be consigned to waste. Would it not be better to compost the off-cuts, or bind them with a natural resin into fibre board class of products for use before returning to the earth as biological nutrients?