When I first covered Zumbox, a paperless mail platform based on physical addresses, a few months ago, I was both intrigued and skeptical. I thought the concept was sound, even revolutionary; I wondered, though, how one start-up could attract enough users to its platform to keep it viable. It turns out that local governments are providing one method: yesterday, the company announced that San Francisco and Newark, NJ, are adopting Zumbox for communication with residents.

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We noted yesterday that design — that is, products like furniture and architecture — that packs flat makes a lot of sense, and is generally a better way to do things. It requires fewer resources to manufacture and produce, is more space-efficient for shipping and allows for quick ‘n easy modularity, for when you’re on the go. If your furniture should fail you, and break, the modular pieces also make it easy to replace just the one broken part, rather than the whole piece. Here are some of our favorite examples of furniture that packs flat.

1) Our Top 5 picks for flat-pack [www.treehugger.com] include a London-based company [www.treehugger.com] who manufacture everything to order (cutting out the need to ship and store furniture before it’s bought), this groovy garden chair [www.treehugger.com] made from one sheet of sustainable plywood, and a “heavy metal” chair [www.treehugger.com] that’s created from a single sheet of perforated (and bent) steel.
2) Designer d.e Sellers came up with the “Emergency Stool” [www.treehugger.com] (pictured above) a single, mobile sheet of plywood (that would make a pretty interesting wall-hanging) but comes apart to create a handy bench. The laser-etched, international instructions (see ‘em on the big piece in the middle) make it a “snap” to put together, as it requires no tools or fasteners.
3) The Knockdown Bookcase [www.treehugger.com] is a great modular option that does the job without glue, hardware or even an instruction manual. Each piece is identical and just slips together to create a modern, modular bookshelf, and the design variations are limited only to what your imagination can dream up.
4) Factum furniture [www.treehugger.com] is sustainable, foldable, and mailable — that’s right, it’s just like getting a package through the mail. It is produced using recycled cardboard and printed with a variety of designs. The patterns are diverse and fun, from floral to the periodic table to the London Tube system.
5) In the same vein, the Papton chair [www.treehugger.com] from Berlin-based Fuchs + Funke goes from flat panels to functional chair in a couple quick fold & fit moves. The structural, geometric result is a real lightweight, weighing it at just two kilograms.

6) German designer Nils Frederking has bowled us over with his folding chair and table [www.treehugger.com] that seem to defy ordinary furniture physics with their deft foldability. Words don’t do the designs justice; you have to see the video [www.treehugger.com] to get the full effect.
7) The designers at Because We Can like to have fun with their work, which is easy to see in the Tree Stump Coffee Table [www.treehugger.com]. Aside from being flat-packable, the table uses sustainable materials and CNC (computer numerically controlled) routing to create the design with a minimum of offcuts and wasted material.
Combining design and engineering experience that includes Indy 500 winning racecars, composite aircraft, consumer products, and industrial equipment, Scott Bennett’s Housefish now specializes in modern, contemporary furniture. Their newest product, called Key, starts with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified maple veneer plywood, which gets a low-VOC finish before flat-packing for shipping.
9) Davidgraas has integrated brilliant packaging design into his flat-pack furniture: the package is the product, as the zero-waste design uses everything in the package to create the product.
10) Lastly, just for fun, there’s the Grass Chair (below), a flat-packing, true do-it-yourself project that allows you to grow your own furniture; you may have to see it to believe it [www.treehugger.com].

We at TreeHugger are a huge fans of the Product Service System, better known to some as PSS. Though the name is easy to trip over, the concept is brilliant: rather than buying everything you need outright, you can essentially “lease” or “rent” a product, deriving benefit from its service but not retaining ownership. That way, when you’re done with it, you can pass it along to someone else, or, in some cases, back to the place where you got it, so they can distribute it to someone else to use for a little while. Confused? Don’t be; there are examples everywhere.

Car-sharing services are one of our favorites. Companies like FlexCar [www.flexcar.com], City CarShare [www.citycarshare.com] and ZipCar [www.zipcar] all offer the ability to essentially borrow a car for a couple of hours, a day, a weekend, or whatever you need; after reserving it online, you just go get the car (they have reserved parking spaces throughout their various cities), enter the magic code or swipe your card, and you’re good to go. Don’t worry about insurance (the company has you covered) and with some, you don’t even have to fill it up with gas. When you’re done with a trip to the store or dropping someone off at the airport, drive it back to where you found it and leave it there for someone else. We especially like this because it encourages people to live more compact lives in urban areas, where car congestion is often ridiculous and out of control.

Another good example of a PSS in action are services like Netflix [www.netflix.com] or even rental stores like Blockbuster. Want to watch a movie? Go rent it, watch it, enjoy it with some popcorn, and then give it back, or, with Netflix, pop it back in the mail — there’s no reason to own hundreds of movies when you can watch just about whatever you want almost any time you want it. This model easily extends to libraries, which essentially offer the same service with books (and many are now offering DVDs and CDs as well). There are also more specific services that use the web to offer a similar deal; America’s Bookshelf [americasbookshelf.com] is one such place. Let’s be honest: do you really need all those books from college? Didn’t think so…

PSS is extending to some less-ordinary territory, too, with companies like SunEdison [www.sunedison.com], who really has a deal for you. They pay for, install, own and operate solar panels and systems, and even handle the insurance; all they want from you is some of the space on your roof, and your agreement to buy the electricity generated by the panels on your roof, at or below current grid pricing. If you don’t own the roof over you head, they’ll even go to bat for you with your landlord or property manager, making it truly possible for everyone with a little sun exposure to take advantage of the deal. Though originally designed for businesses and organizations, word on the street is that they’re happy to chat with residential customers about the deal as well. That’s what we call a bright idea.

So, as you can see, PSS is one of the best ways we know to have your green cake and eat it too, so you can expect to see more great implementations and ideas involving PSS here in the future.