Furniture goes green

By Gabriella Boston

Green furniture — at least the figurative kind — is blooming. There’s high-end and low-end and everything in between.

“It means that people are waking up to their responsibility for the well-being of the planet,” says Susan Inglis, executive director of the Sustainable Furniture Council, a Chapel Hill, N.C.-based nonprofit furniture manufacturers membership group and clearinghouse for green furniture information. “Consumers want to make choices that matter.”


Furniture manufacturers are responding, says Ms. Inglis, whose group frequently adds new members offering sustainable items and even collections.

“The companies know it’s good for people, planet and profit,” she says.

A quick Internet search on green and sustainable furniture provides results ranging from the ultrasleek and expensive to the lower end, but as with most new product lines or concepts, there is no one-stop shop for the good, bad and ugly of green furniture.

“You have to educate people about how to do research on what’s sustainable,” says Keith Ware, owner of Eco-Green Living, a green building and design center in Northwest. “If you’re putting in a bamboo floor, you need to know what’s good bamboo and what’s bad bamboo.”

A quick lesson from Mr. Ware on this increasingly popular choice for flooring — and furniture: Bamboo that’s harvested too soon — usually before it is seven years old — tends to be soft. A floor that’s made of this softer bamboo will quickly show dents and nicks.

“It’ll look like the surface of the moon in no time,” Mr. Ware says.