Drôme: canoes transform into chairs!

When a canoe becomes a chair, instead of being buried or incinerated! In Eurre, in Drôme, Fab Unit offers this original plastic recycling system. A canoe can produce no less than fifty chairs. “We use 100% of the canoe, 100% recycled and 100% recyclable, explains Carole Thourigny, who coordinates recycling. We control the entire chain, from waste to the finished object, and all this is done within a radius of fifty kilometers around us.“

For two years and the start of manufacturing chairs, fifteen tons of damaged canoes were recoveredmainly from rental companies in the Drôme valley. They are then crushed into powder in a grinder, before being melted into slabs in the small factory. “We can cold bend the platedescribes Carole Thourigny while handling plastic, and we manage to make some pretty nice shapes. This comfort, this flexibility [du siège]it’s super nice!“

A pre-sale to finance the new collection

A new collection of chairs is being created. But the feet are made of iron, so you have to finance the manufacturing of these feet and it is by the pre-sale that Fab Unit hopes to obtain the necessary money. “The factory template and tooling parts designed to make the feet are very expensive and we don't have enough money“, testifies the manager. One hundred pre-ordered chairs are needed to start manufacturingby the end of the year.

The seats built using canoes still have a certain cost, 220 euros each. “It's a price taken at the lowest, justifies Carole Thourigny, [pour] a chair design made in France and eco-responsible, we are in a lower range of these prices“, she assures.