Humanscale is a designer and manufacturer that produces office furniture. With U.S. headquarters based out of New York, the company has unveiled its latest creation: The Smart Ocean chair, an office chair that is made with nearly two pounds of recycled fishing nets.
According to company founder and CEO Robert King, fishing nets account for approximately 10% of the plastic pollution in the ocean today. The recycling effort is a step in the right direction when it comes to stalling the slow death of our aquatic ecosystems.
Humanscale partnered with Bureo, a California-based company that works with fisherman across the coast of Chile to collect end-of-life fishing nets. Bureo’s Net Positiva recycling program grinds the nets into plastic pellets that have also been used to manufacture things like skateboards and sunglasses.
According to a recent study, the ocean is polluted with about 8 million metric tons of plastic every year. If we use King’s 10% figure, that means roughly 800,000 metric tons of fishing nets, or 1.8 billion pounds of old nets that fall to the bottom of the sea in a single year. So, all we need to do is sell about 882 million chairs, and we're part of the solution.
Now, it's time to do the right thing and throw your old office chair in the ocean so you can pick up something a little more globally responsible.
But really, we are on pace to have more plastic in the oceans than fish by 2050.