I’ve always liked the idea of transforming an everyday item, like the ubiquitous postal shipping tube – into something unforeseen – in this case a handy, utilitarian stool.

Italian designer Piero Ceratti looked at the common postal tube and envisioned a useful raw material. His stool design features 5 postal tubes and plastic end plugs held together by high performance glue.

The biodegradable, spiral wound cardboard tubes, which usually perform as economical protection for mailing or storing rolled documents such as posters, maps and charts, here become a handy portable stool.

The re-usable tubes create a piece of furniture that’s strong, cheap, green, unbendable and very light and – though I probably wouldn’t suggest sitting on one for an entire soccer match – can be combined into a group seating piece.

Related: we previously posted on some Piero’s sustainable architectural designs