Emeco unveils Za stool made from recycled aluminum

American furniture brand Emeco, which in the 1940s made the iconic metal Navy Chair for the US Navy, has unveiled a stool made from recycled aluminum.

Called Za, the collection comprises stools of different heights with a round, curved seat and four legs. The stool was designed in collaboration with Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa. “The Navy chair is one of the most identified icons in America. I had an image of a round stool, which could become a natural part of the Navy chair family, like a brother or sister,” he said.

This isn’t the first time Emeco has used recycled materials to make chairs. It has also made colorful seats out of 70% recycled plastic with London-based design studio Barber & Osgerby. But Za stools have the smallest carbon footprint of any Emeco product calculated so far, at 8.1kg CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent).

“To put that into context, our 1006 Navy Chair has a low carbon footprint of 14.88kg, which can be compared with a pair of jeans which lands around 30kg, as does an 'average chair' made from virgin materials),” Emeco said.

Another perk of the recycled aluminum stool is that it can be endlessly recycled, so that new chairs can be made from old ones, making it a circular design.

The stools come in varying finishes, from polished and brushed aluminum to powder-coated in red, green, navy, brown, off-white, dark grey and light blue.

Emeco was founded in 1944 by Wilton C. Dinges under the name Electric Machine and Equipment Company (Emeco). It is based in Hanover, Pennsylvania and all of its designs are made there. The business kicked off and grew steadily when Dinges began producing entire chairs out of anodized aluminum and under-bid other manufacturers on government manufacturing contracts, like for the US military and for office building furniture.