Philippe Starck adds stools made from recycled materials to his Broom collection for Emeco

Milan 2014: Philippe Starck has developed a counter stool and bar stool to complement the Broom Chair he designed for American furniture brand Emeco using a material predominantly made from industrial waste.

Starck created the original Broom Chair for Emeco in 2012 to showcase the properties of a new wood-plastic composite developed to utilise resources discarded by lumber factories and industrial plastic plants.

The material is produced from 75% waste polypropylene and 15% waste wood fibres that are ground and compressed into pellets before being mixed with glass fibres and melted so it can be injected into a mould.

Emeco has introduced stools in two heights – a bar stool and counter stool – that are produced using the same simple one-piece "mono-block" construction as the original chair.

The injection-moulding manufacturing process results in strong, rigid forms and the stools are produced using the same green, orange, white, yellow, dark grey and natural hues as the Broom Chair.

"As we worked with Starck to design the Broom Barstool we kept in mind the limited space at a bar in a restaurant or hotel," said Emeco's vice president of product, Magnus Breitling. "We reduced the seat width while maintaining the comfort."

The curving shell of the chair has been translated into a seat with softer edges that merge with the legs of the stool.

"Like its ancestor the Broom Chair, the Broom Barstool is more than just a 'mono-block' stool," added Breitling. "Through the use of waste materials, technology ensuring excellent quality with a long life, and energy conservation in production and transportation, we created an eco-friendly, people-friendly and sustainable 'mono-block' chair and stool collection.""Like its ancestor the Broom Chair, the Broom Barstool is more than just a 'mono-block' stool," added Breitling. "Through the use of waste materials, technology ensuring excellent quality with a long life, and energy conservation in production and transportation, we created an eco-friendly, people-friendly and sustainable 'mono-block' chair and stool collection."

The stools were launched by Emeco at last month's Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, where the brand also presented a collection of stools and tables developed by Japanese studio Nendo.

Emeco has a heritage of developing products using recycled material that dates back to its founding in 1944, when it developed the iconic Navy chair for the US government using recycled aluminium.

As well as Starck, Emeco has collaborated on furniture projects with several leading architects and designers, including aluminium armchairs and stools designed by Jean Nouvel and a collection of tables and chairs for the Parrish Art Museum on Long Island by Konstantin Grcic.

In 2010, it launched a red version of the Navy chair made from 111 recycled cola bottles.