There’s a great moment in the film Sex, Lies, and Videotape: Andie MacDowell—playing the part of the “nice” but actually passive-aggressive and perpetually miserable housewife—turns to her interrogator and says, “all the garbage, just floating out there… doesn’t it bother you?” Hopefully, the practice of loading up barges with our communal detritus and simply pushing them out to sea (from the shores of New Jersey, no doubt) is on its last legs.

Buon Apetito. Designed by Andrew Haythornthwaite & Jordi Canudas.

As Americans become more and more aware of our disproportionately high resource use, creative designers from shore to shore have invented ways to re-use, re-purpose, and re-birth our manifold castoffs. Winter—a lamp made by twisting together handfuls of plastic bags—is one example; Chris Rucker’s Eco Chic/plywood furniture is another; and a third, the subject of this post, is Andrew Haythornthwaite & Jordi Canudas’ “Buon Apetito,” a garbage-eating machine that turns paper waste into furniture. At least, that’s the ostensible function of the duo’s contraption, a paper/waste “processor” that resembles an over-sized muffler on wooden legs. Users simply feed the paper into the apparatus, turn the crank, and watch what happens—the emergence of “a growing sculptural furnishing for people to sit, lean, and relax.” What “Buon Apetito” actually does is create a sprawling, serpentine, cushy beanbag that can be easily manipulated into all sorts of casual formations. Canudas and Haythornthwaite depict the piece as an ideal indoor playground for kids, so the question remains, is buon apetito ready for grown-ups? Are grown-ups ready for it?

The answer depends on your personal level of inner-child. Yours truly—a frequent sufferer of that mysterious and pernicous malady known as “back pain”—takes one look at its uneven contours and cringes at the thought. But others (of more sound ilio-sacral tendencies) may enjoy its bumpy surface, its cushy joie de vivre, its evocation of early 70s living room kitsch. But if, like me, you can’t sit in it, sleep on it, or use it to massage your aching spine, you can always use it as a decorative element. Either way, you’ll be making good use of your personal refuse while giving landfills (and those garbage barges departing from the Jersey shore) a much needed break.

via Designboom