If you are looking to refurnish your home why not choose eco friendly wooden furniture? With the demands on the world’s natural resources ever increasing, buying sustainable wooden furniture is a great way to get some beautiful pieces for your home and help the environment at the same time. But what options are available and how sure can you be that you are helping the environment?
Look at the label
One of the safest ways of buying sustainable wooden furniture is to ask if it is approved by the FSC. Forest Stewardship Council approval guarantees that anything you buy, whether it’s wooden bedroom furniture or wooden garden furniture, is produced in accordance with strict environmental and ethical standards. For FSC approved wooden furniture, search online. There are a variety of stockists and manufacturers across the globe.
Many other sites claim to stock eco friendly furniture but on closer inspection their claims are more hype than substance. To be sure that your are getting what you want visit greenerchoices.org and sustainablefurnishings.org to get more information
Buy furniture made from recycled wood
According to globaltrees.org only 10% of waste wood is recycled. The rest goes into landfill or is burnt. Some manufacturers are trying to reverse this terrible trend by creating new furniture from old wood. Companies like EatSleepLive source their materials from reclaimed church timbers and timbers from other old buildings that have been demolished. The result is very hard wearing rustic furniture that has no impact on the world’s forests.
Recycle and upcycle
The most up to date trend at the moment is the trend for upcycling. Finding your new furniture this way is the most fun way to create your interior and shouldn’t be overlooked. Visit eBay, look in the local ads for the furniture you want and visit the local dump to reclaim old wooden furniture. Check out sites like Freecycle and find your pieces for little or no money at all. Now pull together your collection of random furniture with coordinating paints, fabrics and accessories like funky door handles and decals and voila you have a bang on trend utterly unique look at no cost to the environment!
Finding new eco friendly wooden furniture requires some planning and research but with the internet this need not take more than an hour or two. If you want to be more hands on with your furniture and its new look you can have hours of fun creating your own masterpieces. Either way, you know that you’ll have furniture that is beautiful inside and out.