Emeco 111 Navy Chair: The Chair Made From 111 Coca-Cola Bottles

The Emeco 111 Navy Chair takes its name from the 111 recycled PET bottles that went into its 2010 launch design — the outcome of a four-year project between Emeco and Coca-Cola. The chair Emeco builds today uses more: at least 170 recycled bottles per chair, for a composite that's roughly 90% recycled PET, according to Emeco's current listing for the piece.

A problem Coca-Cola brought to a chair factory

The project began in 2006, when Coca-Cola approached Emeco about turning waste PET bottles into something more durable than the textiles and accessories rPET was normally used for. Emeco's engineering team took on the material problem directly: soft recycled plastic pellets, melted and reformed, needed to hold a chair's structural loads the way welded aluminium did. Reaching a mix that could be injection-moulded, coloured, and trusted for commercial use took four years of testing before the chair was ready to show, debuting at Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan in April 2010 and going on sale that June. Emeco chairman Gregg Buchbinder later summed up the appeal plainly: "We've turned something many people throw away into something you want and can keep for a long, long time."

From 111 bottles to 170: what the recycled content means now

At launch, each chair combined roughly 60–65% recycled PET with glass fiber and pigment for strength, injection-moulded in one piece into the Navy Chair's silhouette and finished by hand — including an added H-brace between the legs — before a final pass smoothed any moulding imperfections. Emeco's current listing for the chair states a higher recycled share than the 2010 launch materials did: at least 170 bottles and roughly 90% recycled PET, though the company hasn't published what changed in the formulation between the two figures. What has stayed constant is the process: rPET drawn from post-consumer bottle-to-bottle recycling — originally a Coca-Cola–backed plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, then the largest facility of its kind in the world — and a one-piece, injection-moulded build rather than a welded frame.

Same silhouette, a different material logic

The 111 Navy Chair carries the exact profile of the 1006, first built by Emeco for a 1944 U.S. Navy commission. As sold today it measures 39.4 cm wide, 49.5 cm deep and 86.4 cm high, with a 45.7 cm seat height and a weight of about 5.7 kg, backed by Emeco's 5-year warranty (excluding glides) and a CAL 133 fire-retardancy certification that qualifies it for contract and hospitality use. Objena lists it at AUD 930, against AUD 1,310 for the hand-welded aluminium 1006 — a gap that reflects an injection-moulded process replacing dozens of hand-welded joints, not a difference in the design itself. Both chairs are made at Emeco's own factory in Hanover, Pennsylvania, the same site the house has run since 1944.

The scale, in bottles

At launch, with each chair using 111 bottles, Emeco and Coca-Cola estimated production would repurpose more than three million PET bottles a year. By late 2016, Emeco reported the running total had passed 22 million bottles diverted from landfill through the 111 Navy Chair alone — a figure set under the original, lower per-chair bottle count. The six launch colours — Coca-Cola Red, Snow, Flint, Grass, Persimmon and Charcoal — trace back to Coca-Cola's own colour language rather than a generic palette, a detail that keeps the collaboration visible in the finished object rather than buried in a spec sheet.

Read alongside the 1006 Navy Chair and Emeco's wider recycled-aluminium story, the 111 completes the house's argument that "sustainable" and "disposable" are opposites, not synonyms — a case that has only strengthened as the chair's own recycled content has grown since 2010. Objena carries the 111 Navy Chair at AUD 930; the aluminium 1006 sits in the same chapter of Emeco's journal.

Three questions

What is the Emeco 111 Navy Chair made from? The chair takes its name from the 111 recycled PET bottles used in its 2010 launch design, built from roughly 60–65% recycled PET plus glass fiber and pigment. Emeco's current listing for the chair as sold today states a higher share — at least 170 recycled bottles per chair and roughly 90% recycled PET.

How is the 111 Navy Chair different from the aluminium 1006 Navy Chair? They share the same 1944 silhouette and dimensions, but the 111 is injection-moulded from recycled plastic rather than welded and anodised aluminium — it weighs about 5.7 kg, comes in six colours, and sells for less than the aluminium original.

How many bottles has the 111 Navy Chair kept out of landfill? Emeco and Coca-Cola estimated more than three million PET bottles repurposed a year at the chair's 2010 launch, when each chair used 111 bottles; by late 2016, Emeco reported more than 22 million bottles had been diverted through the chair's production.