Green Furniture for the Home

I recently was asked for sources for green furniture for the home. I'm mostly familiar with commercial products from our friends at Herman Miller, Teknion, Allsteel, Steelcase, Knoll, and the like. Though many of these companies have products that are available to individuals, they do have a distinct modern look - not necessarily everyone's taste. Here are a few goodies I found that range from the sublime to the ridiculous. My favorites are the beds from Environment-Furniture and the Target tables (last link from Inhabitat).

http://www.inhabitat.com/category/furniture/
http://www.environment-furniture.com/
http://greensofas.com/
http://hautenature.blogspot.com/search/label/furniture
http://www.sprig.com/home/furniture/
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/09/03/back-to-school-targets-economical-eco-furniture/
http://www.vivavi.com/
http://www.greenerlifestyles.com/
http://www.thewoodenduck.com/v2/home.html
http://www.woodshanti.com/
http://www.ifgreen.com/
http://www.greenculture.com/
http://www.viesso.com/viesso/home.php

Cardboard Furniture: Not Just for your Cat

There are tons of common uses for cardboard: kitty scratching post, college student desks and bookshelves, children's forts, sliding practice for aspiring baseball and softball stars... While you may be familiar with some of these, did you know that furniture designers are branching out into greater use of cardboard?

Here's a brief (and incomplete) history:

• 1969 and 1973: Frank Gehry's "Easy Edges" series of designs layered corrugated cardboard to create chairs and tables capped by a wooden layer for extra strength.
• 1990: Patent issued.
• 2000: Cardboard furniture used at Sydney Summer Olympics.

Where can you get cardboard furniture? Well, lots of places:

• Bloxes
• Cardboard Designs
• ReturDesign
• Chaos Shelves
• Foldschool
• Treehugger's picks

Check out my inspiration: GreenSage's e-zine

Could I Get You Something To Drink?

While reading my favorite bike rag there was an advertisement for a cycling event that perplexes me, the Redlands Cycling Classic, http://www.redlandsclassic.com/. It is a road / mountain / kids / track /time trial cycling race / event. One cool thing is that often there are not enough commercial hotels to go around, so the teams stay at host family houses to lessen the demand on local hotels. Hmmm [Could be another blog, yes?]

Anyway getting back to the point, the last page of the add was for a small brewing company that I like, Sierra Nevada. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they take their impact on the food cycle very seriously. They create their electrical power from a fuel cell, they recycle their industrial waste, recover heat from their kettles and CO2 from their fermentation process, not to mention that their waste is used as feed for live stock. Check them out at http://www.sierranevada.com/environment.html.

If nothing else, their Pale Ale is delicious and they are a relatively small business. So enjoy one the next time you are out.

Facts and Figures from the Green Workplace Survey

If you get Google Alerts on the green workplace you will have probably already seen this story, but in case you haven't:

Today the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) released the findings of their Green Workplace Survey. The survey found that 50 percent of surveyed (US) organizations have a formal or informal environmental responsibility policy, but 43 percent have no such policy and no plans to implement one within the next 12 months.

Key findings of the survey were:

• Companies that implement environmental responsibility programs cite improved employee morale (44 percent), increased employee loyalty (16 percent) and a stronger public image for the company (42 percent) as top benefits. They also report increased consumer/customer confidence/choice (20 percent) and a positive financial bottom line (19 percent) as a result of the organization's environmental responsible program.


• The most common barrier to creating an environmental program is implementation cost (85 percent) followed by maintenance cost (74 percent). Other barriers include lack of management support (43 percent), lack of employee support (25 percent), and concern for workplace inefficiency (20 percent).


• Nearly three out of four employees from companies without environmental programs say they want their employers to "go green." Seventy-three (73) percent of surveyed employees in companies without an environmental responsibility policy thought it was very or somewhat important that their organization develop an environmental responsibility policy.


• The majority of "green" programs are created by a senior management team (32 percent) and roughly the same number (31 percent) are also responsible for implementation.


• The HR professionals surveyed rank the top five environmentally-responsible practices to be: 1) encouraging employees to work more environmentally friendly (83 percent); 2) offering a recycling program for office products (83 percent); 3) donating and discounting used office furniture and supplies to employees or local charity (73 percent); 4) using energy efficient lighting systems and equipment such as ENERGY STAR(R) equipment and occupancy sensors (66 percent); and 5) installing automatic shutoff for equipment (63 percent).


• Employees offer a slightly different view and rank the five most important environmentally-responsible practices as follows: 1) donating and discounting used office furniture and supplies to employees or local charity (53 percent); 2) promoting walking, biking, taking public transit (49 percent); 3) using energy efficient lighting systems and equipment (43 percent); 4) offering a recycling programs for office products (39 percent); and 5) encouraging employees to work more environmentally friendly (36 percent).


• Both human resource professionals and employees state that their primary, or number one, motivation for participating in environmentally responsible programs is to make a contribution to society.

Note to the statisticians among us: the Green Workplace Survey's 429 HR professional respondents represent publicly- and privately-owned companies, nonprofits, and the government sector. The 504 employee sample was randomly selected from U.S. telephone population.

You can purchase a full copy of this survey at http://www.shrm.org/surveys/.

Sustainable Office Furniture

Too often the words "office furniture" conjure up images of beige cubicles and faux leather chairs. Fortunately for us, the sustainable movement has emphasized intelligent design and thoughtful furniture. The October issue of Metropolis had a great feature on vendors like Haworth, Herman Miller, and Steelcase who have significantly increased the amount of recyclable materials in their chairs. Not only are these really sexy chairs, but indispensable furniture that is eco-friendly. While the most "green chairs" are re-used chairs, the ones featured are a great alternative when refurbished chairs aren't practical.

These chairs are free of much of the carcinogenic chemicals that escape landfills and pollute our soil. All three chairs are gold certified by the McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry Cradle to Cradle system which ensures environmentally friendly composition.
While the chemical make-up of each chair is an important element, they are also designed for easy disassembly. The ability to simply assemble/disassemble chairs allows for easier, more efficient shipping.....which in turn minimizes the carbon footprint of the chair. All 3 manufacturers in the article use blankets instead of cardboard for packaging on large domestic deliveries.

An unquantifiable quality the article didn't touch on was the user interaction benefit. Typically, in a LEED Certified Building, the users don't have an opportunity to interact with the building. Using chairs made with the environment in mind, that are comfortable and aesthetically pleasing is a great way for employees to see and feel green.
While the chairs will have many, many years of use, the manufacturer's provide information for customers looking to off-load their old furniture, either to third-party used-office furniture re-furbishers or for scrap. Remember, if your office decides to trade in your old chairs for some sexy new models there is probably a great home for them.
Peter Hall who penned the article for Metropolis wrote, "Ultimately, it is encouraging that while other industries rail against standards set by the EPA, office-furniture manufacturers have set themselves goals that are far higher than any federal standards."

From top to bottom:
The Mirra (Herman Miller) is 96% recyclable.
The Think (by Steelcase) is 99% recyclable.
The Zody (by Haworth) is 98% recyclable.

www.metropolismag.com