By TRACY LINHARDT

A Monash design student has designed a new fully sustainable modular chair that lets the user decide its function.

First-year student Hannah DeBuhr is currently attempting to manufacture her product EVO, to be sold for about $50 and made of recycled parts.

"EVO is short for evolve, because my chair can be made into a huge range of furniture items, as many options as the user can come up with really," Ms DeBuhr said.

It has been designed with ergonomics and adaptability in mind, for young students and working professionals.

Ms DeBuhr said the real issue was finding manufacturers prepared to produce EVO with sustainable materials and without the environmental impacts of mass production.

Ultimately, EVO would be made out of recycled plastics, as this addresses a “huge environmental issue”.

The chair would transform "what potentially can be a toxic and environmentally harmful material into a beautiful, everlasting and ever-functional product", she said. 

The main goal is to keep plastic out of the environment and into homes and educate the public about its reusability.

“Plastic isn’t the problem,” Ms DeBuhr said. She noted the recent anti-plastic stories in the media, and that companies such as Coles, still had too large an emphasis on plastic bags.

Sustainability had become too much of a black-and-white subject, focusing only on specific materials, and it needed more community awareness to drive the issue, she  said.