Focus on Arts and Ecology

A Rotterdam-based studio is turning Amsterdam resident’s plastic waste into public street furniture.
The New Raw’s project, “Print Your City!” calls on citizens to support turning their discarded plastic into furniture by combining 3D printing with recycling.
Their first prototype, the XXX plastic bench, turns plastic bags into stylish 3D-printed benches. These chairs are made to look like rocking chairs and can fit up to four people, but the company says this can be easily customized.
Even better, when the bench can’t be used any more it can be taken a part and recycled again up to seven times to create more furniture for public spaces.
Each resident of Amsterdam produces up to 50.7 lbs of plastic waste each year. Each bench weighs about twice that, meaning that Amsterdam citizens produce enough plastic waste to build one bench for every two residents every year.
The “Print Your City” website states, “Print Your City! explores the concept of applying 3D printing to plastic waste, as a way to re-design urban space. As the name suggests, Print your City! is a call for action, rallying citizens to recycle household plastic waste in order to transform it into raw material for public furniture, via a 3D printing process.”