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Eco-friendly furniture
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This article is the first in a series of making your home more environmentally friendly.
The next time you go furniture shopping, bring your environmental principles with you. By selecting the right home furnishings, you can protect the Earth and preserve our natural resources. There are many ways you can make your next furniture buying trip into an eco-friendly expedition.
First, always try to buy furniture made from recycled materials, such as steel, glass, and even plastic soda bottles. When purchasing items made of wood, always make sure the wood used has been “reclaimed.” That is, the wood should come from warehouses, abandoned buildings, and riverbeds. Organically grown materials are also earth-friendly, so always buy organic when getting cotton and hemp materials.
For the time being, environmentally-friendly home furnishings tend to be more expensive than their traditionally counterparts. Still, the more consumers demand eco-friendly furniture, the lower prices will become. By buying eco-friendly furniture, you can become a part of an important trend in lower prices for these kinds of products.
There are a multitude of eco-friendly furniture companies. Some of the best companies include:
- Case Green Construction and Cabinets offers a wide range of environmentally friendly cabinets made from bamboo, lyptus wood, African hardwood trees, and Italian plantation-grown poplar trees.
- For semi custom kitchen cabinets, check out Amero Cabinet Collection. Amero’s stylish storage solutions and cabinet door styles allow you to be eco-friendly while making your kitchen a stunning showcase.
- Green Tech Cabinetry offers a wide range of commercial and residential cabinets that are eco-friendly.
- Neil Kelly has been making eco-friendly cabinets since 1966, making them first in the world with a full range of environmentally friendly materials and techniques.
But you can still save money and be earth-friendly. One store that is committed to using sustainably grown wood is Ikea, which offers a huge range of very cheap furniture. But new furniture is not your only option. You can help the earth by buying used and antique furniture. By buying pre-owned furniture, you reduce the amount of waste heading the landfills. You can also reduce landfill by simply reclaiming the furniture you have through reupholstering. And when you give your furniture away to a struggling student or worthy charity such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army, you’re participating in a sustainable recycling.
And don’t forget mattresses and bedding in your environmental habits. Most mattresses are filled with polyurethane foam and other flame, water, stain, and wrinkle-resistant materials. Some of these chemicals, which include polybrominated diphenyl (PBDEs), can pollute the air inside your home. According to the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition (CHEC), there is some evidence that PBDEs have harmful effects on thyroid hormone, which is critical to the developing fetus. According to some studies, women in the U.S. have the highest levels of PBDEs in their bodies in the world. Even Teflon® has fallen under suspicion of being unhealthy. The main ingredient in Teflon, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), has become widespread in the environment and in humans.
So the next time you get a mattress and bed sheets, make sure it’s made from untreated organic cotton and wool. Since these organic mattresses won’t have the same flame-retardants as mattresses treated with PBDEs, you should position a smoke detector near the bed and place any flame sources away from the mattress. If you have to store your furniture for awhile, be sure to use a storage facility (egg harbor township) with climate control to ensure your belongings are not damaged by changes in temperature.
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