Sustainable Home Furnishings: Three Rules for Making a Proper Selection

 

The Lacey Act Amendments, with the final phase going into effect in April 2010, reinforces the grounds for legal prosecution of anyone found guilty of importing, transporting, selling or buying any furniture using illegally harvested wood from the U.S. or abroad. The only way to get around this is by using sustainable home furnishings for interior home design.
 

Here are three rules for selecting sustainable furnishings for your home decorating projects:

 

 

Major vendors such as Target and Crate and Barrel sell eco-friendly furnishings at reasonable prices. You can also buy tables, desks and chairs that are built from reclaimed and/or recycled woods. Another option is to purchase wood products that come from sustainable forests.

 

No product is strictly green to the environmental purist, because as soon as a manufacturing process begins, there is an ecological impact. There are also “shades of green,” and products on Office Depot’s buygreen site are rated just green, light green or dark green, depending on their environmental benefits relative to other products in their category.

 

 

Even the glues and dyes in your furnishings should be green, containing no volatile organic compounds, or VOC’s. Traditional furnishings for home designs contain products such as formaldehyde, which has a negative effect on the air we breathe. Eco-friendly furnishings use water-based or bio-based products that eliminate the use of VOC’s that are found in many traditional glues and finishes.

 

Furniture stores such as Lowe’s have been adding several products to their offerings to meet the needs of those who are eco-friendly. Lowe’s in particular has also been trying to educate customers that this is not just a trend, but a true way of life.