Green Talk

As the Editor of Green Talk, I receive endless emails from companies asking me to write about their products. Although you may think that this can be overwhelming, I am the fortunate one since I get to meet some amazingly passionate people along the way.

A month ago, I was privileged to spend time with Lori Jacobson, co-owner of The Repurposed Home. Lori is an interior designer who has started this Company with her daughter, Katie, to take furniture and accessories bound for the trash and repurpose them into fabulous to die for pieces.

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How many chairs and sofas are put to the curb in the name of worn, outdated, or stained fabric? Well, I am faced with this dilemma. What to do with my family room couches who have been through the civil war. Every day is a new game and different sides. After five years of abuse, the fabric just threw in the towel and said both sides win.

I could not blame the fabric. How was cotton chintz with its soft touch ever able to battle the child demons who thought nothing of it to take cushions and use them as swords in all out combat sessions? I swear I could hear my fabric wince every time an incoming pair of feet thought my couch was a launch pad or end zone for nameless games.

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Photo by permission of Cisco Brothers of the Basal Living Collection’s Acacia sofa

Ever since I laid eyes on Cisco Brothers’ environmental Basal Living Collection in its catalog, it was love at first sight. How would I describe this furniture line? Style and sustainability wrapped up in a homey feel.

Cisco Brothers offers two different green options for its consumers. The first option is The Basal Living Collection, which is green throughout. The second option is to pick any one of the 300 different furniture pieces from the Company’s various lines, and incorporate the company’s Inside Green™ option, which is featured in the Basal Living Collection. So what is there not to love?

What also intrigued me about this company was the story behind Cisco Brothers. It is a classic rags to riches story. Simply put, boy meets success the hard way, but never forgets his roots.

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Photo by permission of Oliveira Textiles featuring the Anemone red fabric design

Art imitating life is how I would describe Oliveira Textiles’ newly designed sustainable fabric collection. Their new series, “Ocean,” is fluid, vibrant, and graceful reminding us of Dawn Oliveira’s inspiration, the ocean, in memory of her late fisherman father, who called the sea his office. The Ocean collection can be used for drapes, pillows, and light upholstery.

Each of us has a defining moment in our lives that causes us to diverge into an unexpected path. Unfortunately, the untimely death of Dawn’s father from cancer, changed twin sisters, Dawn Oliveira and Deborah Olson’s, lives forever. This moment in time fast forwarded Dawn’s dream to start her own design company, and brought her home to Rhode Island from a successful designing fashion career in NY. As a tribute to their father, Dawn and Deborah decided to form Oliveira Textiles combining Dawn’s artistic flare with Deborah’s business acumen.

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Would you want to sit on this chair for 8 hours a day?

Do you sit at your desk for endless hours and at the end of the day every part of your body hurts? It is not age. It is what we are sitting on. I know since I have been sitting in a hard rigid wood chair for 4 hour stretches a day. It feels like sitting on your hemorrhoids for those who know what that feels like. And for the young’ins reading this Article, it feels like an intense butt sunburn or sitting on just your bones with no extra padding. Ouch is an understatement.

 When I could not bear the pain anymore, I graduated to my bedroom pillow as my cushion for relief. Then my back started to get in the act and said, “hey what about me?” Between my back, neck, and tush, I could not tell who was winning the contest for my sympathy.Why not an elegant seat cushion or a new chair, you might ask? I kept saying next week, I will look for a chair or a cushion. The following week would come and go. This nonsense ritual went on for weeks until I said enough. Kind of like the shoemakers’ children who do not have shoes, well, I was the writer without the perfect chair.

My Goldilocks adventure started to unfold as I went to Staples to sit in all of their chairs. This one did not support my back. This one’s lumber support did not land in the right place. That one was too expensive. Then I threw in,” are any of these made of recycled materials?” Why not make life complicated? Welcome to my own personal American Idol competition where my tush was Randy Johnson, and my back was Simon. I am not sure which of my body parts was Paula Abdul…

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Photo by permission of Lee Industries

Lee Industries, a family owned company, has been manufacturing furniture since 1969 adhering to the same principles of yesterday as they do today. Its commitment to manufacturing high quality furnishings in the United States and the focus on its customers, community, and the environment have not changed since the Company’s founding.

Norman Coley, president of the company, credits his father, Bill Coley, founder and CEO of the Company for Lee’s environmental vision as evidenced by the company’s standards to produce long lasting quality furniture, which would not be discarded in landfills. Even as early as the 1980s, the Company introduced their Ecology Plus Program to eliminate their use of ozone depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) from its furniture components. In 2006, Lee introduced the NaturalLEE standards, which made accessible, affordable eco-friendly furniture mainstream. As Norman Coley adeptly states, “Lee is constantly pushing the environmental envelope.”

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Photo by permission of Viesso of a Gente sofa

For years, Furnature was the only company making eco-friendly furniture. Over night it seemed more and more furniture companies started making their furniture with an eye towards sustainability. Remember my friend who needed the eco-couch that I spoke about in my article, “Shouldn’t Your In-Laws Sleep Well?” One night as I was surfing the web looking for her I found Viesso by mistake. I was shocked that I happened upon an eco-furniture company. (Green companies are just popping out of the wood work these days!) To be honest, I thought here we go again. Another company claiming that it is green just because they use FSC certified woods. What about the glues, the stains, and the cushions? Shouldn’t they be green too?

As I continue to look through their website, I found out Viesso is the real green deal. The Company sells chair, sofas, sectionals, benches, tables, rugs and accessories. Since I was focusing on a sleeper couch for my friend, I found that a customer can purchase an upholstered furniture piece which contains sustainable harvested wood , eco-friendly fabrics, natural latex cushions, low voc stains and sealers, and recycled stainless steel legs. That’s pretty green in my book.

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Photo by permission of Furnature

For over a decade, Furnature has been setting the standards for quality custom-made, enviromentally friendly furniture by meeting the needs of those suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivities.

“In the spring of 1994, our firm received a request for a custom sofa from a woman that would change the face of our business. Her immune system was compromised after her home was exterminated for pests. She became so ill that she couldn’t tolerate ordinary furniture and bedding. After three years of extensive research, the first sofa using all chemical-free ingredients was produced and Furnature™ was born.”

Their furniture has become popular with people who want to live a sustainable life free of harmful environmental toxins. Today, the Company manufactures an extensive line of chairs, loveseats, sofas, ottomans, mattresses and bedding for both the environmental conscious and those suffering from multiple sensitivities.

What does all this mean for the eco-conscious?

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Photo by permission of Viesso

Your In-laws or friends are coming to visit, but you don’t have a bed for them or even room for one in your home. Asking a guest to sleep at a hotel is not in your nature. You could buy a vinyl “blow-up” bed. Then you quickly come to your senses and realize you don’t want your guests to sleep on a bed made of plastic. With all the controversy surrounding the toxicity of PVC, and the chemical additives contained in plastic, you decide to skip the blow-up-bed idea. So, what are your options? What about a sleeper couch? Is it possible to buy an eco-friendly sleeper couch without breaking the bank?

Believe it or not, the other day one of my friends asked me this very question. Oh boy, I thought, that is a tall order. Not only did the couch have to be eco-friendly so did the mattress. The three sources I knew that sold eco-friendly couches were Furnature, Lee Industries’ NaturalLEE Collection, and Viesso. Not knowing how eco-friendly my friend wanted to be, I figured I would just give her the low down about these companies and their products. From the information provided, she could then make her choice.

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The morning after, could this be your car?

We have been looking for about a year for a used bedroom set for my teenage son. He had outgrown his children furniture, and I wanted him to have a set he can take with him when he decides to live on his own, which is coming sooner than I thought.

 Like all young parents we bought into the idea of transitional furniture for our kids.  It was smaller and youth like. Not much bigger than their baby furniture. Kind of the three little bears, just right for our children with a small desk and smaller drawers for their little clothes. Why should I buy him an adult set I thought.  I remembered we all fit in our twin beds until we went to college and beyond.  I would have never dreamed of buying him an adult set.  He was so small. An adult set would just be too big.

 Fast forward to a decade and some years later, he is big.  He is bigger than both my husband and me. I am not sure where he came from.  Was it an alien abduction in my sleep?   His big shirts, plumber like baggy shorts, and large sweatshirts no longer fit in his transitional furniture.  It was time for an adult set for him and his littlest brother would take his. For all of the young parents out there, in hindsight, perhaps we should have bought him an adult set from the beginning so I would not have been in this dilemma.  

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