"We invent new materials using the world's most abundant and dangerous resource – human trash – and we do so without compromising an inch on design, performance or function," the company says in a straightforward explanation. "We can turn yesterday's drinking bottles into beautiful, ergonomically designed chairs. We can turn your cracked smartphone screen into high-end glassware." Everything is about making "throwaway" useful again.

So is their latest project to build furniture in collaboration with Snarkitecture, whose own mission comes from a line from a Lewis Carroll poem describing the "impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature." That sense of adventure is what infuses the reinterpretation work of the New York-based design house, and the teamwork on the "Fractured" line shows off its everyday ethos.

The tables and benches are built as sets that appear torn when separated but fit together, much like a heart-shaped friendship locket where each person keeps half. The bench becomes two separate chairs when pulled apart; the full-size table becomes two separate recycled-aluminium surfaces just as easily.

What's exciting about the collaboration is that the furniture is made entirely of recycled human trash. "The bench seat and backrest are made from Plyfix felt, which is created entirely from old plastic but resembles and feels like a textile covering," says Snarkitecture. Each bench is made from 240 plastic bottles, 45 aluminium cans, 120 pieces of recycled food packaging and four old automotive bumpers.

"These are then built using nitrogen-assisted injection molding, extruding the aluminium into long bars, this then takes shape via CNC machining and is then anodized," the company video explains.

The recycled aluminum-surface tables are made with more than 1,200 aluminium cans, 140 plastic cartons and six of the car bumpers, Pentatonic said. The table can be used as a full-sized unit or separated into end tables, which are easily made lower by adjusting the height of the underlying base.

The jagged edges of the table and bench contrast with Pentatonic's precise fabrication techniques, while the structure and design of "Fractured" captures a sense of transformation in a recycling process itself. For their part, Pentatonic sees the collaboration with Snarkitecture as an opportunity to apply the ecofriendly practices that their engineers and designers have been developing for the past 15 years.

"With enough creativity, each incarnation can be better than the last – with less impact. Waste doesn't end up in the earth, the environment isn't destroyed from resource extraction and recycled products have a lower carbon footprint than those from virgin materials," says the Berlin-based design house. The partners see "Fractured" as an experiment geared toward achieving a circular, zero-waste economy.

Pentatonic also has made an unusually strong commitment to traceability, which is being embraced by countless companies and their supply chains – from aluminium producer UC RUSAL to McDonald's to Clif Bar – in order to provide full transparency on ecofriendly practices, human rights or conflict-free status. Each component of the "Fractured" furniture has a unique ID engraved on it so that consumers know what trash it was made from, and where and when it was made. Pentatonic is building a database so that any part can be looked up and identified online, part of their "lifetime commitment" to a product.