I have spent some time reading about, and basically drooling over, the products by a company called 3-Form. They specialize in making panels from ecoresin™, which is a co-polyester resin (PETG) with 40% post-industrial recycled content. The panels come in a myriad of colors and designs and come is the following gauges:

Many have materials sandwiched inside of them like woven cotton, grasses and woods. These materials are grown and/or created sustainably. 3-Form also has a reclaim policy whereby they take back used materials and reprocess them and sell them again. Pieces damaged during production are trimmed and sold at a discount as part of their reclaim program.

Their most versatile material is called Varia. Here is a sample of what the material can look like:

3-Form has recently added panels that have very thin wood veneers sandwiched in them. They remain somewhat translucent but look like wood panels otherwise. ecoresin™ can be thermoformed and machined. I could make a ‘bent plywood’ chair without plywood and without have to make a mold (though I might have to create something to slump the material over to give it form). I would really like to buy a panel of this stuff. They also provide fabrication services where they will cut and heat bend you material to spec. It might be outside my budget however. I am still waiting to hear back from a rep about pricing. The choices on the reclaim part of their website is fairly affordable however (a 2′x4′ panel can be had for less that $100). Perhaps I will buy a panel from there if a panel of the wood is too much.

What is great about bringing this material into my process is that any leftover material that I have I can send back to them! This makes them high on the list of possible sources for material.

3-Form’s website: http://www.3-form.com/index.php
Varia: http://www.3-form.com/materials-varia.php
Reclaim: http://www.3-form.com/about-low_impact-reclaim_program.php
Info on PETG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate