The Coca-Cola Company and Emeco, a leading furniture manufacturer, have combined their iconic products, the Coca-Cola contour bottle package and the famous Navy® Chair, to create a new chair — “111 Navy Chair™”  — made from at least 111 recycled plastic bottles.

Modeled after the original aluminium Emeco Navy Chair designed in 1944 for the U.S. Navy, each 111 Navy Chair contains a mix of 60 percent rPET plastic (recycled polyethylene terephthalate plastic) and a special combination of other materials including pigment and glass fiber for strength. It is estimated that more than three million PET plastic bottles will be repurposed annually for the production of 111 Navy Chairs.

The rPET content in each chair is sourced from the world’s largest plastic bottle-to-bottle recycling plant that began operation in 2009 in Spartanburg, South Carolina in the United States through a partnership between The Coca-Cola Company and United Resource Recovery Corp.

The chairs will be available for sale in June 2010 in select retail locations worldwide and can also be ordered by sending an email. 111 Navy Chairs are available in six colors: Coca-Cola Red, Snow, Flint, Grass, Persimmon and Charcoal.

Coca-Cola first launched rPET merchandise in 2007 as a way to inspire people to recycle by showing them how PET bottles can be transformed into products for everyday use. rPET merchandise includes fashionable t-shirts, bags, caps, notebooks and now a chair made of recycled plastic bottles. Each item indicates the number of plastic bottles used to create it. The rPET merchandise line is just one of many sustainability initiatives by The Coca-Cola Company and is a testament of the Company’s long history in innovation.

To promote the idea, Coca-Coa collaboated with the Wieden + Kennedy agency, which created a short film about the chair.