In the West, 95% of broken Monoblocs end up in the trash, which isn´t the worst thing: Polypropylene is a thermoplastic and can be recycled easily if the trash is properly sorted. In other regions of the world, the price of a plastic chair often equals a day´s work salary or more, and people go to great lengths trying to keep the furniture. What makes many of those repairs so attractive: Polypropylene is altogether unsuitable for adhesive bonding, let alone the fact that the contact surfaces are tiny compared to the loads the chair structure has to take. Methods of fixing broken Monoblocs thus are inherently rather complex – and they are manifold.

You may use wooden slats or metal sheets screwed across the fracture, or just tape..

From Bulgaria and Mexico, photos Jens Thiel.

Sewing with wire also does the job for backrests or even for the seat..

From Sri Lanka and Mexico, photos Jens Thiel and Daniel Spehr.

If the damage is more substantial or the repair-person more daring, whole parts of the chair may be replaced..

From India, photo Hannes Gieseler.

.. the seat shell may be mounted onto an (mostly metal) exoskeleton frame..

Photo Daniel Spehr.

.. combined with just another broken chair..

Havana, Cuba; photo from Paul Keller´s flickr.

.. or most pragmaticly “trash stacked” – combined with another broken Monobloc into one half-way stable not so new chair

Bulgaria, photo Jens Thiel

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