Suzanne bought a chair for my study today, a birthday/Father’s Day present. The one I’ve been using has a shredded back (courtesy of one of our cats), peeling vinyl in various places, and requires a cushion in the seat to be at all comfortable.
The new one is from the Shaquille O’Neal Collection of a company called Maximos (I’m not making any of that up). Not as soft as the Serta, which felt like sitting on a featherbed, but overall a comfortable sit. After some confusion at the checkout we got it loaded into the Kia and headed home.
This chair was made in Vietnam, a product of our global economy, and came, as do most things, with some assembly required. The chair itself is metal, plastic, and fabric, pretty standard stuff. It’s a nice chair, and I think I’m good for as long as I’ll need a desk chair; the really impressive thing was the packaging.
these days almost everything I unwrap is inside many layers of plastic, styrofoam, more plastic, and so on, from fast food to-go orders on up. This chair came in a cardboard box. All the pieces were wrapped in paper. The hardware needed to assemble the chair was stored in a paper box and sorted according to size and where in the assembly they would be needed. Here’s how they shipped the bolts:
Everything used to protect and transport this piece of furniture is either reusable, recyclable, or biodegradable. Given how ubiquitous single-use plastic is, I find that remarkable, and hope it’s an indicator of a growing trend.