14 DAY TRIAL // According to an industrial design student, the “off the richter” amounts of electronic waste our society is presently responsible for creating are also due to the fact that industries design rather expensive products that, oddly enough, can only satisfy one of our needs throughout their entire lifespan.
Therefore, he argues that, should scientists set their minds to it, solutions could be found to come up with modern products that can multi-task, meaning that they can be used to serve various purposes.
As earthtechling.com informs us, Ky Snyder, the afore-mentioned industrial design student, went to work and investigated how he could take some of the products currently available on the market and up-grade them into more versatile items.
One of the most impressive outcomes of his endeavor is the Cuebilux, which is basically a milk crate turned into a bar stool, turned into a solar lamp.
As Snyder himself explains, “The aim of all this was to develop a greater understanding of components used in consumer goods and how they can be given a second life, redesigned to enable ease of further lifecycle and give insight to creating a system for distributing components.”
The concept behind this highly innovative bar accessory is quite simple: the previously-milk-crate stool has a custom-made solar panel fixed to its base, which keeps itself busy collecting the sun's rays during daytime.
Once the night comes, the stool can be simply flipped over and all the energy collected while the sun was shining is released in the form of light.
Although for the time being the solar stool is not meant for public use, given the fact that both its design and manufacturing were carried out as stages of a studio project, we do salute the idea and hope that further research will go into coming up with similar environmentally friendly oddities.