Photos: furniture made of 'green' cardboard

As prices rise for oil and raw materials, fans of furniture made from cardboard call it more earth-friendly and affordable than its wooden or pressboard counterparts, which usually require felling trees and using toxic glues. Cardboard is also lightweight and can be packed flat for easy shipping.

Take a look at the pictures below for innovative cardboard furniture designs from the likes of star architect Frank Gehry and fellow designers. Online furniture store Cardboard Design doesn't use screws or toxic glues, and attracts 4,000 visitors a month to its Manhattan store, so it says. The US is about a decade behind Europe when it comes to cardboard furniture -- 'green' labels are more prevalent in Europe, so cardboard furniture is inherently more popular here.

Not only is cardboard already made of recycled bits, but it's also recyclable itself -- and there are more possibilities for altering the material than you'd imagine. Cardboard Design CEO Vahid Pourkay has a patent pending on what he calls "liquid cardboard," which can mutate into as many as 50 different shapes including vases, bowls and pen holders.

French designer Eric Guiomar began sculpting furniture from discarded corrugated cardboard boxes 15 years ago and became enchanted with the material. He's involved with a group of Parisian designers which calls themselves cartonnistes, after carton, the French word for cardboard, and is president of Compagnie Bleuzen. He wants to spread cardboard furniture design to the developing world, which he believes could benefit from the inexpensive material.

ReturDesign in Sweden has an online catalogue that includes nearly every staple type of furniture -- even beds, cradles and coffins.

But FedExFurniture.com probably offers the most notorious display of cardboard furnishings. Low on cash in 2005, software developer Jose Avila used FedEx shipping boxes to furnish his apartment in Tempe, Arizona, and then uploaded photos to the web.

For more quirky eco designs, have a trawl through our reviews -- we've tried out the Swedish-designed, cardboard Chaos Shelves from Nigel's Eco Store and all sorts of bizarre, recycled furniture like the Cohda RD4 Chair and the TING Sling hammock.

A table by Cardboard Design, an American design firm that sources all cardboard from within the US (Photo: Cardboard Design)

Here are some examples of Cardboard Design's "liquid cardboard" shapes (Photo: Cardboard Design)

This image shows how building a piece of cardboard furniture from old boxes can be similar to crafting the hull of a boat (Photo: Eric Guiomar)

The silhouette of these drawers is inspired by actress Rita Hayworth's dress in the 1946 film 'Gilda' (Photo: Eric Guiomar)

This cardboard couch is from ReturDesign -- it sells nearly every staple type of furniture including beds, cradles and coffins (Photo: ReturDesign)

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