A Recyclable and Sustainable Cardboard Bed

Yes you read that right. Assuming you actually read the headline that is. The first eco-friendly, vegan, sustainable, 100 per cent recyclable cardboard bed has arrived in the UK. It comes in a box and you simply stretch it out – a bit like a concertina – throw your mattress on top and climb in.

You don’t need any screws or fixings or anything at all and you can take it down just as fast as you put it up. Invented in Germany by Room in a Box (who make other cardboard furniture including a stool that can double as a bedside table) the cardboard bed comes in four finishes – natural, white, black and blue with prices starting at £99.99 for a single and £189.99 for a king size.

It has been available in Germany and France for some time where it has proven popular with landlords as it’s easy to put up and down as well as transport between apartments. Now Room in a Box has teamed up with Happy Beds to sell it in the UK.

It comes with a 12 month guarantee, although the makers claim it will last as long as any conventional bed – it has also been tested to be folded and unfolded 1000 times so the folds clearly won’t weaken with use.  It’s made from 70 per cent recycled material to create corrugated cardboard and is also vegan-friendly. The remaining 30 per cent of material is from sustainable forestry and the glue is free from animal ingredients using instead corn, wheat and starch-based products.

It’s a clever idea isn’t it? A few months ago I saw a corrugated cardboard stool in Tiger and couldn’t believe how strong it was. This weighs 10kg but will take up to 1000kg in weight so you don’t need to worry about it collapsing under you. And I’m guessing if you spill your coffee in bed it’s the mattress that will absorb the liquid before it ever reaches the cardboard. The concertina frame design – which looks like a massive wine storage unit – distributes your weight evenly across the whole bed.

If you don’t like these colours – or move house and want a change – you can paint it with acrylic paint using a small roller for best results. And if one day you decide to buy a conventional bed you can plant this in the garden and use it to make sure your carrots grow straight.

You can buy a cardboard bed from Happy Beds and it’s shipped with DPD (these days I find I like to know that detail as there are so many with varying degrees of efficiency but DPD gives you a one hour window which is useful) and could be with you in three days of ordering. What do you think? We slept on a mattress on the floor for about five years before we got round to getting a bed so if this had existed 20 years ago we would definitely have bought one.