Italian designer Tobia Zambotti has used discarded single-use masks as the stuffing for a sofa to call attention to the amount of plastic waste being generated as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Named Couch-19 as a direct reference to Covid-19, the design is filled with personal protective equipment (PPE) that was collected by citizens of Pergine Valsugana, Zambotti's hometown in the north of Italy.
Couch-19 is made of more than 10,000 single-use face masks
The light blue masks are covered in clear PVC to resemble the tip of an iceberg as a nod to the fact that the 10,000 face coverings used to create the sofa are only a fraction of the 129 billion that have been thrown away globally every month since the start of the pandemic.
Estimates suggest that around 75 per cent of these will end up in landfill or floating in our waterways, where over the course of around 450 years they will break down into microplastics and ingested by marine life. It was designed to resemble an iceberg
"We are facing a pandemic of easy, cheap and single-use plastic solutions like masks, gloves and face shields, even though there are great sustainable alternatives and we all know how important it is to use them," Zambotti told Dezeen.
"My goal with this project was to transform something that is considered trash into something meaningful."

The final design resembles Harry Nuriev's Balenciaga Sofa, which saw piles of the brand's old, discarded garments trapped behind clear...