In the spirit of Earth Day, Ryan Homes at Brunswick Crossing wants to make sure that you're saving money and the environment with your home in the Brunswick Crossing Community! Did you know designing the interior of your home can also be done in an enviromentally-friendly way?
The way that you design your home has a unique reflection on you as a person and your sense of style. Today going green is the trend in many new houses as well as many renovations. From rugs to cabinets to furniture there is a new twist of style with an eco friendly bonus. Making environmentally smart choices when decorating your home not only has a big impact on the environment but your health as well. We've compiled a list of environmentally friendly decorating tips for your home, which you'll find below.
Here are ten Green Furniture Tips:
- Buy certified suitable wood. This means that the wood used to make that product has been harvested in a sustainable way or from reclaimed wood. Sometimes simply put you plant a tree for a tree you cut.
- Buy furniture from reclaimed wood which usually comes from old furniture, houses, or other built things that are ready for a make over, from flawed wood, or from scraps from a factory that makes other stuff. Some reclaimed wood even comes from logs that sunk to the bottom of rivers as they were being floated downstream to the sawmill, or from the bottom of man-made reservoirs.
- Use Bamboo which isn’t a tree at all but really grass which comes in colors from lime green to maroon. Bamboo can be flattened into flooring, molded into furniture, pressed into veneers, sliced up to make window blinds, or you can just build your whole house out of it.
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Use Recycled/recyclable metal and plastic, more furniture is being made from recycled plastics and metals as well, like a recycled aluminum Icon Chair. Recycled materials require less processing and fewer resources, and help support the market for recycled materials.
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Recyclable and disassemble, good eco-friendly furniture should be easy to repair, disassembly, and recycle. Products that meet these requirements are certified MBDC’s C2C or Cradle to Cradle. A perfect example of this is Herman Miller Steelcase certified office chairs.
- Look for furniture that is durable and flexible, if something is tough and/or can be readily repaired, this lessens the chance that it'll end up in the landfill, and could easily save you money in the long run, even if it's initially more expensive.
- Low toxicity furniture, no matter what it's made out of, chances are it is off gassing (or releasing substances into the air). Almost everything off gasses, which isn't necessarily bad, but synthetic materials or those treated with synthetic substances can give off gas chemicals which are toxic.
- Buy vintage and second-hand furniture it requires no additional resources to manufacture, is often locally sourced, is pre-off gassed and eases the load on the landfill.
- Buy Local, this will support the local economy, small craftspeople, and decrease the environmental cost of shipping.
- When it is time to get rid of your furniture, try to see it goes to a new home, repurpose it, or recycle it.
Try some of these great going green ideas as you shop for interior decorating. Brunswick Crossing is always thinking of new ways to go green! Visit our community and see why we are Frederick County's most dynamic planned community.
