Pressing Matters Floor Lounger

The Pressing Matters Floor Lounger is a furniture piece Seljak Brand created with Sarah K of supercyclers that’s made from shredding and compressing textiles waste from the mattress recycling industry. The Floor Lounger not only uses waste as a valuable resource, it’s able to be recycled at the end of its useful life. This means it's a closed loop furniture product that will never end up in landfill.

The organisation we partnered with recycles almost 1000 used mattresses a day in New South Wales alone. While they can recapture the timber, steel and foam, they are yet to find a solution for the textiles waste, which ends up being 5kg per mattress. This waste, or shoddy, is a combination of synthetic and natural materials, which are too difficult to separate at a fibre level when recycled.

Supercyclers and Seljak Brand joined forces in 2018 to test the possibilities of using the shoddy to create a sturdy material suitable for furniture. Through a combination of felting, moulding, compression and heating/cooling, a solid form was created with no additional chemicals added to the production process.

So why a Floor Lounger? We believe that lounging around is important and is a remedy to the busy lives we lead. A world in which overworking and overproducing are the norm, placing strain on both people and the planet.

We were inspired by the sustainable lifestyles of people living in Blue Zones, which are the places in the world where people live the longest. Older folk in Okinawa, Japan – one of the Blue Zones – have few furniture items and sit on the floor, getting up and down several times a day ensuring ongoing strength.

The Floor Lounger can be used in public spaces like libraries, for wellness in places like yoga studios, or for home use in the living room. It’s an antidote to our complicated and busy lives that doesn’t cost the Earth. 

Pressing Matters Floor Lounger was one of five finalists in the 2020 Australian Furniture Design Award. While it’s currently in the prototyping phase, we’re exploring opportunities for manufacturing the Floor Lounger.