Global Ecovillage Network/Solution Library/Making a sofa stool from used plastic bottles

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The Ndanifor eco-village demonstration site, as well as homes, hotels, restaurants, and offices in Cameroon, want to have good-looking stools in their residences, but these chairs or stools can be very expensive. Another major challenge is reducing plastic bottle waste in the environment, which can be very difficult in underdeveloped countries. Upcycling these bottles will help address this.

About 40 used bottles of the same height and size (probably 1.5litres each). Sand can be added in a few bottles to give it some weight; duct tape; two circular pieces of plywood of the desired circumference; enough sit foam to go around and on the bottles; and a material with any preferred design, all depending on your preference.

Join the bottles next to each other in your desired circular size and hold them together with duct tape. Place the two circular boards at both ends of the already-joined set of bottles, and duct-tape the set together.

After already having the desired shape the bottle and plywoods, you now surround the structure with the foam and glue, you carry out this action until you have a desire thickness and soft form. At this point, all that is left to do is to measure and sew the material on the designed sit, this action can be carried out by any individual or by the help of a tailor. You can make many designs, chairs, circular, square, rectangular triangular etc.

The wide scope of design imagination involved in making this stool enables you to design what ever kind of stool you want, so many waste plastic bottles can be used at a time and thus reducing the waste bottles greatly (if you have so many) at one go. It saves you the cost of buying ready made chairs or stools which are way more expensive than plastic bottle stools. One can also make these stools, sell and earn a living.

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