Auburn students took what most people would only see as trash and turned it into something useful and environmentally friendly.
Auburn University's Department of Industrial and Graphic Design participated in the Design Green competition for the 11th year.
"Design Green is a two day event intended to highlight the sustainable or environmental impacts of the projects that we design," said Jerrod Windham, assistant professor. "It puts a spotlight on environmental impact."
The department invites guest lecturers who are either experienced in designing products that have reduced environmental impact or with companies that supply materials or components for reduced environmental impact.
They then have the 24-hour Design Green competition that centers on the idea of designing something with a reduced environmental impact, Windham said.
Students on the winning team for the competition were Lee Cooper, Sarah Caudle, Joshua Hanson, Piao Hailing and Andrew Rentz.
"We made close to a six scale model," said Lee Cooper, Junior in industrial design. "It was just a tiny model of the chair, it wasn't digital or anything it was actually made out of cardboard."
Their model was three inches tall and three inches wide. Other competition participants made digital or full-scale models.
Guest lecturer Dan Goldstein was the designer of the chair that the competition was based on.
The students had 24 hours to make improvements on the chair.
"What the students did was look for a redesign of the base in a way that it could be shipped easier and then they also looked at how the seat shell could be redesigned using the materials that were either recycle or recyclable or had some environmental or eco material," Windham said. "One of the challenges that this designer in particular realized was that his base was not designed in a way that it could be shipped very easily."
Goldstein's chair, the Re-Ply chair, is made completely out of cardboard and steel. One of the challenges for designing the chair was thinking about the environmental impact of the product.
The entire life cycle of the product had to be considered including where the materials came from, how they were processed and manufactured, how the product is used and what will happen to the product when it is no longer being used.
"The theme of the contest is always to improve something that is already sustainable," said Joshua Hanson, junior in industrial design. "We all were big fans of the current design that the designer brought to us to improve; we decided to not focus on changing the design, but rather improve the sustainability and cost factor involved in the production of the product."
Hanson was on the winning team of the competition last year as well.
Most of the students used cardboard for the chair, but some branched out and used material like potato sacks.
The designs that the students sent Goldstein will be used as potential inspiration for his next chair, Windham said.
The chair would be ideal for someone to use while playing video games, Windham said. "They are very unique and pretty low," Windham said. "They are most suited for a casual environment, they aren't really set up for someone to sit at a desk or a table."
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