If you have to furnish a new home, or just want to remodel a room, your choice of furnishing can have long-term effects on the environment. More and more homes are switching to more green, less toxic products, but even the furniture you buy can help or hurt the earth. Eco friendly furniture can be found just about anywhere, because it includes any furniture that reduces waste on the planet.
Tree stumps as ottomans and chairs made of melted plastic bottles certainly reuse materials that would otherwise get destroyed, but a home full of eco friendly furniture doesn’t need to look so avant-garde as that. Making a couch has been made with recycled materials or table with reclaimed wood has become prominent enough to accommodate any style of home décor. Those who value antiquity and vintage as much as the earth, though, are in even better luck. Cushions made of recycled fibers are better for the earth than most new furniture, but they’re less environmentally friendly than the majority of green furniture available.
Most people already own a few pieces of eco friendly furniture without realizing it: an old family hutch, a bunk bed purchased at a garage sale. Second hand furniture serves at the most eco friendly option for people to put in their homes, because it requires no additional production methods. Even green factories and recycling plants pump many chemicals into the air, and many fleets of trucks are necessary to transport their products. Buying second hand, though, uses only the gas it takes to drive to an antique store and back. No more trees get cut down, no more manufacturing plants pump out smoke, and homeowners can still enjoy quality, eco friendly furniture.
