Broom Collection: a past life as industrial waste and a future as a chair in your life.

French designer Philippe Starck designed a chair collection made of discarded material found in lumber factories and industrial plastic plants. The innovative creator and Emeco have joined efforts to work towards zero waste. A design collaboration that avoids and eliminates waste.

Less is more!

“The elegance of the minimum comes from the intelligence of the nothing” says Philippe Starck. “Mies Van der Rohe said “Less is more”, but with the Broom chair we can say “less and more”. Because we choose to make less – less “style”, less “design”, less material, less energy – finally we have more.”

Broom introduces an entirely new chair material composite, combining reclaimed polypropylene and discarded wood fiber. The reclaimed polypropylene and discarded wood-fibre can eventually be recycled and turned into a new wood-plastic composite, extending the lifespan of the waste materials even further. This material has a three-fold environmental impact. Less energy, less waste and less carbon.

In most manufacturing there is waste. Pieces of plastic and wood are discarded and thrown away every day in million of quantities. Imagine a new material that sweeps up this waste, combines it, and makes something strong and smart and beautiful. The result is the Broom chair. It has a past life as industrial waste and a future as a chair in your life.

‘Philippe Starck and I have always agreed that it is not about recycling, but about restructuring production,’ says Emeco CEO Gregg Buchbinder. ‘Our aim is to prevent waste from being manufactured in the first place. Instead we use discarded materials to make things that last.’

Emeco has always been a pioneer of repurposed materials such as recycled aluminum and recycled PET. It keeps giving us products which confirm that everything can be recycled and made useful and beautiful. The Broom chair combines intelligent materiality with beautiful form.

Photo credits: Emeco