Dutch furniture company Vepa (link in Dutch) launched a line of various chairs and stools made of hemp and bioresin which are recyclable and biodegradable.

Said to be the most sustainable chair in the world, Vepa uses a waste stream of hemp processing as raw material to make the seating of the chairs. Hemp is grown without fertilizer or pesticides, uses little water and can be cultivated locally in the Netherlands. Hemp absorbs more CO2 than is released in the production process, making it a CO2 negative chair.

After harvesting, the factory of Hempflax extracts fibres from the hemp, which are turned into mats, the base material of the chair. To mould the chair into shape, biobased resin company Plantics developed a resin.

The chair is designed to be demountable, so that the individual parts can be separated and reused. At end-of-life, the chair can be shredded and turned into a new chair, without the addition of chemicals or other substances, indefinitely. The seating is biodegradable as well.

Photos: Vepa