Around Town

Boxing Clever
‘As a society in London we’re so fat and lazy. It’s very important as a designer to be eco-friendly because you can have a massive impact on how people live,’ says product designer Jason Iftakhar, 26, who graduated last year from the Royal College of Art.

His ‘Raw Bench’, made from compressed cardboard packing, is already turning heads. Highly innovative, his forged steel die cutting tool enables supermarket packing machines to turn old cardboard boxes into simple furniture, allowing supermarkets to reuse waste product, rather than recycle, and so save money and, more importantly, resources. The idea blossomed after Iftakhar was struck by how much waste packaging supermarkets generate. ‘My idea is about getting a big result without wasting a lot of energy,’ he says. ‘The materials and the machinery were already there, it just needed to be harnessed. It’s the perfect environment to take advantage of a system that’s already established.’ He hopes that, because supermarkets won’t have to invest too much in the technology, they’ll be more inclined to buy into it. The bench’s simple lines give it a contemporary feel, with its durability belied by its near weightlessness. With its looks and eco-friendly credentials, it has future classic potential – hence the £450 price tag.
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