BALOLO Setup Cockpit: Wood Monitor Stand That Adapts to Your Work

Most desks tell the same story. A monitor sitting too low, forcing you to hunch forward. A tangle of charging cables disappears behind the desk, where you’ll never find them again. Your phone wedged between the keyboard and a coffee cup, headphones draped over the back of your chair, and a growing pile of notebooks that never quite fit anywhere. It’s functional enough to get work done, but it’s also the kind of setup that makes you dread sitting down every morning.

The Setup Cockpit by BALOLO approaches this differently. Instead of adding more organizers that take up space or forcing you to commit to a fixed layout, it creates a foundation that adapts to however you work. The monitor stand itself is straightforward, a long walnut or oak shelf that raises screens to eye level while freeing up the desk underneath. What sets it apart is the patented mounting grid running along the bottom, a system of attachment points that lets you easily add accessories wherever they’re needed and rearrange them whenever your workflow changes.

Designer: Ruben Keferstein

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The first thing you notice when unpacking the Setup Cockpit is how solid it feels. The wood is real American walnut or oak, hand-finished in Germany with natural oils and waxes that bring out the grain. The feet, made from MDF wood, are sturdy enough to keep the whole thing stable, even with two large monitors perched on top. It’s the kind of build quality you’d expect from furniture that costs a few hundred dollars, not something marketed as a desk accessory.

Setting it up is refreshingly simple. Slide your monitors onto the shelf, adjust the monitor height if needed, and tuck your keyboard underneath in the 3.9 inches of clearance. That alone transforms how your desk feels, raising screens to eye level and opening up space you didn’t realize you were wasting. But the real shift happens when you start adding accessories from BALOLO’s modular ecosystem, which is where the mounting grid earns its keep.

A laptop riser is perfect for those days when you need a second screen. A MagSafe holder keeps your phone charged and visible for notifications without cluttering the surface. Cable magnets attach to the grid, holding charging cables in place so they don’t slip behind the desk every time you unplug something. Heck, there’s even a headphone holder that keeps your cans within reach instead of draped over your monitor or tangled in your bag.

The modularity is what makes this feel genuinely useful instead of just another piece of furniture you buy once and forget about. Your workflow changes depending on what you’re working on, and the Setup Cockpit keeps up. Whether you need a tablet holder for sketching or more space for your accessories, the BALOLO Setup Cockpit lets you customize your desk to suit your preference, while leaving you with the freedom to expand and change it at any time.

What’s surprising is how much this changes the rhythm of your workday. Starting with a cleared surface instead of a pile of cables and peripherals makes sitting down feel less overwhelming. Everything has a spot, and that spot can change if you decide you want your phone on the left instead of the right. It’s the kind of flexibility most desks never offer, where adding one thing means removing something else or living with clutter.

The materials help too. The walnut finish warms up spaces that lean too heavily on black plastic and aluminum, while the oak or black-stained oak options fit minimalist setups without feeling cold. The wood is sealed, so spills and wear won’t ruin the finish, and the whole thing is built to support up to 50 pounds without wobbling. That’s reassuring when you’re stacking ultrawide monitors and laptops on top of a shelf.

The Setup Cockpit doesn’t reinvent what a monitor stand can do so much as it refines every detail until nothing feels compromised. BALOLO’s approach combines German craftsmanship with modularity that actually makes sense, creating furniture that transforms your desk without forcing you to tear everything apart first. It’s designed to adapt as your work evolves, which is exactly what premium workspace solutions should have been doing all along.

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This Furniture Collection Was Designed By Your Inner 5-Year-Old

Remember the pure joy of stacking blocks as a kid? That satisfying click when you balanced a square on a circle, or the creative rush when you toppled everything and started fresh? Yellow Nose Studio remembers, and they’ve turned that childhood magic into furniture that actually makes sense for adults. Their INDERGARTEN collection is basically what happens when you let your inner five-year-old design chairs, and honestly, it’s brilliant.

The Berlin-based Taiwanese design duo behind Yellow Nose Studio did something clever with the name itself. They dropped the “K” from kindergarten, and in doing so, opened up a whole new way of thinking about design. It’s not just a cute play on words. It’s an invitation to approach furniture the same way we approached play: with curiosity, experimentation, and zero pretension.

Designer: Yellow Nose Studio

Here’s the concept in its simplest form. Take three basic wooden shapes: a circle, a square, and a rectangle. Stack them. Rotate them. Layer them differently. What you get is ten distinct variations that somehow look like they belong in a contemporary art gallery and your living room at the same time. The pieces function as seating objects and vases, all handcrafted from beech, cedar, and pine.

What makes this collection so fascinating is how the duo actually creates these pieces. They don’t just sketch ideas and hand them off to manufacturers. Each designer makes ten pieces, then they swap and literally deconstruct each other’s work, adding new elements until they both agree on the final ten designs. It’s collaborative in the truest sense, with every piece containing both perspectives. That back-and-forth, that willingness to take apart and rebuild, echoes exactly how kids play with blocks, and it’s what gives these pieces their unique energy.

The philosophy behind INDERGARTEN nods to Friedrich Froebel, who established the first kindergarten in 1840 with the radical idea that children learn best through play and hands-on experimentation. Yellow Nose Studio has taken that concept and applied it to their entire creative process. The result is furniture that feels both architectural and organic, structured yet playful. New geometries emerge from simple gestures, the same way a tower appears when you stack blocks one on top of another.

The collection made its debut and has since traveled to exhibitions, including “A Second Field” at Tokyo’s LICHT Gallery in 2025. The gallery’s director gave them total creative freedom, telling them to create whatever they wanted with no restrictions. That kind of trust speaks to how well this collection bridges the gap between functional design and art. These aren’t just chairs you sit on. They’re conversation pieces that challenge how we think about form, function, and the creative process itself.

In a design world that often takes itself too seriously, INDERGARTEN feels refreshing. The pieces are sophisticated without being stuffy, minimal without being cold, and playful without being childish. They prove that you can make something grown-up and refined while still channeling the experimental spirit of play. Whether you’re a design enthusiast, someone who appreciates contemporary craft, or just someone who wants furniture that makes people do a double-take, this collection delivers.

Yellow Nose Studio has even published a monographic book documenting the series, complete with stunning photography by Daniel Farò. The hardcover publication emphasizes the duo’s fluid practice between design, craft, art, and architecture, showing how blurry those boundaries can get when you’re working from a place of genuine curiosity. What’s next for INDERGARTEN? The designers hope curators will imagine these ideas evolving into bigger projects. They’re following the same playful, exploratory process to see where it leads. And if their wooden blocks have taught us anything, it’s that the best creations come from stacking, unstacking, and being willing to start over when the spirit moves you.

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Someone Built a Working Synth From Cardboard and Walnut Keys

Most synthesizers look and feel like appliances. They’re plastic boxes mass-produced in factories, efficient and functional but utterly lacking in personality or warmth. Pianos and guitars get to be handcrafted instruments with wood grain and visible joints, while synths are treated like glorified toasters with circuit boards inside. That disconnect between electronic music and tactile craft has always felt like a missed opportunity, especially when you consider how satisfying it is to play a real wooden keyboard.

One maker decided to fix this by building a fully functional synthesizer from scratch, using materials that sound completely impractical. The result is a compact, 34-key synth with a fiberglass-reinforced cardboard body, a steam-bent walnut frame, and individual keys handmade from oak and walnut. It looks like something between a vintage record player and a mid-century hi-fi component, with a turquoise fiberglass shell and warm wooden accents that feel more like furniture than electronics.

Designer: Gabriel Mejia-Estrella

The body starts as folded cardboard panels cut from a template, then gets layered with fiberglass cloth and epoxy until it transforms into a rigid, glossy shell. The process borrows from old automotive techniques where fiberglass shaped custom car bodies in the 1950s, giving the synth a retro-futuristic sheen. Around the perimeter sits a continuous steam-bent walnut strip with oval cutouts that mimic speaker grilles on vintage radios, adding visual warmth and a furniture-like presence.

The keys are where the craft really shows. Black keys are made from laminated walnut offcuts, while white keys are cut from oak for contrast and durability. Each key is individually shaped, drilled for a shared steel rod pivot, beveled to prevent jamming, then coated with fiberglass and sanded up to 3000 grit for a smooth finish. The result looks and feels closer to a piano than a typical plastic keyboard.

Underneath sits a custom flexible printed circuit with interdigitated copper pads and rubber dome switches. When you press a key, the dome collapses and bridges the pads, closing a circuit that a Teensy microcontroller scans continuously. The Teensy sends MIDI messages to a Raspberry Pi running Zynthian, an open-source synth platform packed with engines and presets, all displayed on a small touchscreen.

Of course, using cardboard and steam-bent walnut creates challenges the designer readily admits. Cardboard turned out to be impractical, requiring multiple fiberglass layers and tedious filling. Walnut is notoriously stubborn to bend, needing kerf cuts and boiling water to soften the fibers. The designer suggests foam board or 3D printing as easier alternatives and notes that more precise tools would have made the keys cleaner.

What makes this synth significant is how it challenges the assumption that electronic instruments have to be cold and industrial. By using wood, fiberglass, and visible handwork, it reintroduces warmth and personality into something usually purely functional. It’s less a finished product and more proof that synthesizers can be beautiful, tactile objects worth admiring even when silent.

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A Side Table That Doubles as a Bookmark for Your Favorite Reads

Side tables typically end up holding whatever gets set down near them. Coffee mugs accumulate next to half-read novels that slide beneath remote controls and charging cables. Books in progress disappear into this visual clutter, creating friction between the intention to read and the reality of finding where you left off. Most furniture treats books as afterthoughts rather than priorities, offering no dedicated space that keeps them visible and within reach.

Bookmarker addresses this by treating reading as an activity worth designing for specifically. The table’s form creates a clear place for books in progress, making them visible rather than buried. Japanese cypress construction gives it a warm, tactile presence that reads as furniture first, while its cutouts and slots serve the practical needs of someone settling in with a novel and a drink.

Designer: studioYO for Bito

The entire piece cuts from a single board of vertically laminated cypress, producing three interlocking parts with minimal waste. This efficient approach allows the table to ship flat and assemble without hardware, reducing both material use and packaging volume. The cutouts that enable this nesting also define the table’s visual character, creating geometric negative space that feels intentional rather than incidental.

Assembled, the table forms a C-shaped profile with a circular opening and a vertical slot running through its center. Books slide into that slot and rest upright, accessible from either side depending on where you’re sitting. The circular cutout provides another grab point for reaching volumes stored within. This dual access removes the awkward leaning or reaching that happens with conventional side tables when you want a book stored underneath.

The top surface holds a mug, small plate, or reading glasses without crowding the book storage below. Water-repellent ceramic coating protects the cypress from condensation rings and accidental spills, which matters when hot drinks sit directly on wood. The coating maintains the natural wood finish rather than creating a glossy sheen that would feel out of place.

Leftover material from production becomes small cardholders included with each table, extending the zero-waste philosophy to packaging and accessories. The flat-pack design collapses the assembled table back into its three nested components, making storage or relocation straightforward if living situations change.

What distinguishes Bookmarker from typical side tables is how it makes reading visible in daily spaces. Books stored vertically in the slot create a small display of current interests rather than hiding beneath surfaces or leaning against walls. The table becomes a physical reminder of reading intentions, turning background clutter into foreground presence.

The cypress grain varies across each piece, ensuring no two tables look identical. Wood’s natural characteristics mean some sections show tighter grain while others spread wider. This variation reinforces the handmade quality and material honesty. The light tone works across different interior palettes without demanding specific color schemes.

Bookmarker occupies a specific niche between purely decorative furniture and purely functional storage solutions. It handles the practical needs of readers who want books and drinks close at hand while maintaining a sculptural quality that justifies its presence even when not in use. The table makes reading visible in daily spaces without forcing aesthetic compromises or demanding reorganization of existing routines.

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Modular Pet Stairs in Wood Finishes Won’t Clash With Your Décor

If you’ve ever watched your dog or cat leap onto the bed or sofa with reckless abandon, you know the mix of pride and worry that comes with it every single time they make that jump. Pets love being close to their humans and feel safest at elevated heights, but those jumps can put a lot of strain on their joints, especially as they age or if they’re recovering from injury or surgery.

Most pet stairs solve one problem while creating another entirely different headache for pet owners. They’re either clunky and impossible to store when guests visit for the weekend, plain ugly and clash with your carefully chosen furniture and decor, or just take up too much space in already crowded rooms. Finding stairs that actually help your pet without ruining your interior design feels nearly impossible for most pet owners.

Designer: The bPawrents Team

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PawStairs offers a smarter solution with modular, flat-packable stairs featuring swappable, scratch-resistant paddings that blend into your home seamlessly and unobtrusively. The system lets you build two or three steps depending on your furniture height and your pet’s climbing needs, adapting to beds, sofas, or any favorite nap spot throughout your home. Assembly is easy and intuitive, requiring just minutes even for people who struggle with furniture assembly.

When you need more space for guests or just want to reclaim floor area temporarily, the stairs pack completely flat for compact storage under beds or in closets. The clean lines and minimalist silhouette mean PawStairs looks right at home in living rooms or bedrooms without screaming “pet product” to everyone who visits. Two wood finishes let you match your décor, with Original offering light tones and Walnut providing warm, rich hues.

Each step is topped with a scratch-resistant, easy-to-clean padding in velvet or leather options for different textures and looks. If a cover gets worn from daily use or you want to switch aesthetics, just swap it out without replacing the whole stair. The non-slip base pads ensure secure footing on every step, and the stairs support pets up to 99 pounds, from tiny Pugs to large Golden Retrievers.

The swappable padding system means maintenance is simple and stress-free for busy pet owners juggling work and family. Muddy paws, shedding fur, or the occasional accident wipe clean in seconds, and when a cover needs refreshing, you just pull it off and snap a new one on. No complicated proprietary tools, no wrestling with awkward clips or zippers, just quick swaps that keep everything looking fresh and inviting.

Built from high-quality solid wood and scratch-resistant leather and velvet, PawStairs is engineered specifically for long-term durability under daily use from active pets. If any part ever wears out from enthusiastic climbing, you can replace just that component instead of tossing the whole unit. This modular approach reduces waste dramatically and extends the product’s life for years of reliable use without requiring complete replacement.

Imagine your senior dog climbing onto the couch without struggle, or your cat confidently reaching her favorite window perch for afternoon sunbathing sessions. PawStairs makes these moments effortless for them, reducing stress on aging joints and lowering anxiety in small breeds or pets with mobility issues who might otherwise avoid heights altogether. The stairs work equally well for young pets who need safe access.

For multi-pet households with different-sized animals sharing the same space, the modular design means everyone from tiny kittens to large dogs can find their perfect step height and climbing rhythm. The neutral wood tones, clean aesthetic, and swappable paddings let PawStairs blend naturally into your home while making your pet’s comfort and safety a visible, intentional part of your living space without sacrificing style or floor space.

Click Here to Buy Now: $185 $265 (30% off). Hurry, only a few left!

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Topographic wooden coffee table puts the Rock of Gibraltar in your room

Coffee tables these days aren’t just places to put down books and drinks. They’re often the center of a room, specifically a living room, both in location and in design. They do more than just add visual interest in a space but, in many homes, also reflect the owner’s tastes and sometimes their aspirations.

That’s especially true if you get the opportunity to design your own coffee table or get someone to do it for you. This wood and glass design, for example, tries to capture feelings of welcoming warmth as well as structural strength. And what better way to represent those ideas than by putting the semblance of a glorious mountain right in the center of your living room.

Designer: Prerna Panjwani

The Rock of Gibraltar is a majestic sight that inspires awe not just with its height but with its distinctive shape as well. It’s almost like a ship resting in the ocean and a testament to the Earth’s geological history. It isn’t as imposing as other mountains, making it the perfect fit for a coffee table design.

The Vista coffee table, however, doesn’t simply mold or carve the shape of the mountain. It instead assembles layers of rosewood panels cut to the rough shape of the Rock of Gibraltar. The layers are held together by a few sticks of wood, creating very visible gaps in between each step.

The resulting aesthetic is similar to those cardboard topographic maps some students are told to make for their science projects. It’s almost like an artistic representation of a geographic form, leaving just enough details for our minds to fill in the gaps. At the same time, this layered design is like a metaphor for the natural formation of the mountain itself, built up layer by layer over hundreds if not thousands of years.

The Vista coffee table tries to combine the lofty image of mountains with the grounding materials of wood. It’s definitely a conversation starter among guests seeing it for the first time, or even between friends revisiting memories of the table’s arrival. Perhaps an unintended feature of the design is the gaps that can be used to hold or hide objects, almost like the man-made structures that have been built around the mountain, also a metaphor for the clutter that humans create around nature.

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Japanese wooden satellite launched to help curb space trash

The media focus on rocket launches, moon landings, and Internet satellites has inspired many to look to the stars for the future of mankind. There are still plenty of areas on the Earth that can be explored, but our expansion can only expand upward at this point. But even before we get there, we are already filling our outer skies with dozens if not hundreds of small metal objects known as satellites, and their numbers are only expected to grow as we move forward.

Satellites have various applications, from communication to observation, but none of them so far remain in orbit in perpetuity. We are, thus, facing a two-headed problem of a myriad of these objects cluttering the space around our planet as well as plummeting back down, sometimes with disastrous results. To find out if there are more sustainable options, the world’s first wooden satellite just made its extraterrestrial voyage in the hopes of replacing metal with wood in the future.

Designers: Sumitomo Forestry, Kyoto University

Satellites can orbit the Earth for years, but they will eventually be decommissioned and fall back to Earth. Most of their mass will burn up on re-entry, but the burning metal will release dangerous aluminum oxide pollution into the atmosphere. Wood will also burn up, of course, but the effects on the environment will be significantly smaller.

Made from Japanese hinoki or cypress wood, the boxy LingoSat satellite is designed to test the theory of replacing metal satellites with wood-enclosed versions. The sides of the box are held together without screws or glue, using a traditional Japanese craft technique similar to dovetail joints. This method will help minimize the use of metal or potentially toxic materials that would burn in the atmosphere.

The experiment will test how well wood will fare in the harsh environment of space, such as extreme temperature fluctuations, and how well it can shield electronics inside from space radiation. The latter could have useful applications back here on Earth as shielding for semiconductors in data centers. If successful, this design could significantly help solve the problem of space trash and debris falling back down.

The LingoSat wooden satellite launched into space last Tuesday and will be heading to the International Space Station. From there, it will spend six months in orbit at a height of 400km (250 mi) above the Earth. Like any other satellite, it will eventually be decommissioned and fall down but with less fanfare.

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Bamboo drone explores a more sustainable way to fly and deliver things

Some see them as annoyances and others consider them as privacy and security risks. That said, flying drones, just like their quadruped terrestrial counterparts, will inevitably be a part of our near future. That does mean there will be more mass-produced drones, more than what we already have today, and the materials used to make them aren’t always accessible or sustainable. But just as plastic is being replaced in other design industries, there’s also an opportunity to test other materials that are just as suitable for these flying robots. One experiment does exactly that, and it chooses a rather unexpected option that’s much loved in the design industry: wood.

Designer: Deepak Dadheech

Wood is not something you’d immediately associate with electronics, let alone robotics, but it is finding its way to more appliances and gadgets. In those cases, the material is prized for its sustainability and aesthetics, the latter of which isn’t exactly a priority among unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs like drones. That said, not all wood is created equal, and one particular type could very well be suitable for the demands of a drone.

Bamboo, in particular, is known for being lightweight yet also durable, especially when it comes to its tensile strength. Unlike hardwood, which could splinter and break on impact, bamboo can absorb a bit more strength. It’s also in high supply or easily renewable, unlike other trees that take a longer time to mature. Because of these properties, it could make for a good substitute for both plastic and carbon fiber, as the Bamboo hexacopter drone demonstrates.

Of course, the whole drone isn’t made of bamboo. In addition to the circuitry and brushless motors, the propellers are still made from plastic. Only the main frame, legs, and arms use bamboo, which is the largest use of plastic or carbon fiber in drones anyway. For only around $12 worth of bamboo, you can have a drone that weighs only 350g, half that of typical plastic builds.

The question, however, is whether such a strategy will actually be effective or if it will have too many compromises for the sake of sustainability. The Bamboo Drone does fly indeed and it can, in theory, carry light payloads like tools, emergency supplies, or scientific instruments. How it will fair against strong winds and light rain has yet to be tested, and that will really determine how suitable bamboo will be for a fleet of drones.

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Minimalist side table concept uses a single wood sheet with almost no offcuts

Wood is a favorite among designers, especially furniture designers, because of its innate beauty, unique grains, and sustainability. But although the material is indeed biodegradable and recyclable, most furniture designs still result in a lot of waste. There can be many uses for wood chips, sawdust, and unused wood pieces, but an even better solution would be to reduce the wasted material in the first place. That means making every square inch of a sheet of wood count, leaving very little behind once the piece of furniture has been put together. That’s the idea behind this beautiful minimalist side table, where designing for efficiency has also led to a very interesting organic shape in the process.

Designer: Deniz Aktay

Flat-packed furniture has become trendy, especially with the minimalist designs propagated by the likes of IKEA. But while these designs are indeed space-efficient and economical, most of the time they’re mass-produced in a manner that produces plenty of offcuts and waste by-products. After all, it is also more efficient to cut all the legs of tables from the same batch of wood and all the tabletops from another, even if their shapes mean there will be plenty of scraps literally left on the cutting room floor.

Slide Table is a design concept for a side table that advocates efficiency both in packaging as well as in manufacturing. Every part of the table is actually cut from a single sheet of wood, so even mass-produced versions would have the same qualities. Yes, there will still be some unused parts that are cut off to produce the gaps between parts, but the goal is to minimize this waste as much as possible rather than eliminate them completely.

What makes this efficient use of the material is the rather unique design of the table itself. The tabletop is a disc carved from the middle of a rectangular plank of wood, and the remaining section is split in half to form the legs. The legs themselves “slide” into each other, connecting in the middle and forming a cross shape on which the circular top rests. It’s a simple yet intriguing shape that creates something like an optical illusion when viewed from the side.

While Slide Table does offer a beautiful and more sustainable design, it leaves some concerns about the stability of the furniture itself. There is no clear indication of how the legs stick together, or how the tabletop stays stable. It’s certainly possible that other smaller parts of the wooden sheet can be used as dowel rods to connect the pieces, which would further reduce the amount of wasted materials. This design, however, also has its limits in how big the table can be, as the tabletop will always be proportional to the rest of the sheet that would become its legs.

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Eco-friendly tumbler uses thermoplastic made from unused wood byproducts

Coffee lovers have thankfully become more conscious of the harmful effect their drinking habit has, not on their bodies but on the planet. Plastic cups are the biggest culprits, of course, but even paper cups actually take a toll on the environment in the long run. Paper is sustainable and biodegradable, but the rate at which we manufacture the material is faster than we can grow trees to maturity. At the same time, normal wood isn’t exactly a good material for reusable cups or tumblers that are becoming the go-to solution for environment-conscious drinkers of coffee, tea, or water. This design concept tries to offer a middle ground with a seemingly magic thermoplastic tumbler that is actually made from unused wood.

Designer: Kim Jiwoo (Designer Dot)

Wood is a material well-loved by designers because of its innate beauty and sustainability. But while it does grow on trees, trees don’t grow overnight. And while there are alternatives that make use of recycled synthetic materials like plastic, these don’t easily decompose like wood, which can turn into material that nourishes the soil that trees grow on. In other words, wood is the perfect circular economy material, and it would be great if it could take on the beneficial properties of plastic as well.

CXP or Cellulose Cross-linked Polymer is that growing (no pun intended) solution that promises the best of both worlds. It’s made of wood, specifically the cellulose that is the building block of trees and plants, but it has also been plasticized through specific chemical processes that are fortunately easy to reproduce. Unlike bioplastics that need very specific conditions before they decompose, CXP behaves exactly like wood in this regard. In other words, once this tumbler has reached the end of its life, it can be even used to nourish the soil for other trees whose discarded wood will be used to make more thermoplastics.

LINK is the expression of this sustainability innovation, a tumbler that tries to signify the connection between humans and trees on multiple levels. Its handle is intentionally shaped like a branch sprouting from a tree trunk, sporting a length that is ergonomic for any hand size. The trunk, which is the main body of the tumbler, is also shaped with ridges that try to mimic the uneven surfaces of trees, while also adding to the grippiness of the container.

Unlike a regular wooden vessel, LINK can be used to hold hot beverages like coffee since it is also a conventional thermoplastic. Spills, leaks, and slips can be prevented by using eco-friendly silicone, perhaps the only concession to this design. And because of the very nature of such recycled materials, there will be very noticeable specks of color that give each tumbler a unique identity that represents its special link to all life on the planet through wood.

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