Sustainable Furniture: How To Furnish Your Home Responsibly

Did you know you can practice sustainability when it comes to your furniture? You can do so in virtually any area of your life, but your furniture is the last place you would expect it. That said, you can certainly find it, and we’ll show you how you can furnish your home responsibly using sustainable pieces below. 

Sustainable Materials

Does your furniture use eco-friendly materials? What this usually entails is the manufacturer using repurposed or recycled materials. Sustainable furniture could also be easily renewable. Bamboo is a perfect example of this since it grows three times quicker than trees, making it the perfect renewable resource for furniture materials. 

Also, sustainable furniture won’t use volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that occur during the painting and staining process. The following are some questions you might want to ask your furniture salesperson when you speak to them. How was it made? Is it sustainable?

Sustainable Manufacturing

When looking for sustainable furniture, it’s not just about using sustainable materials. You also need to consider the manufacturing process’s impact on our planet. Naturally, these processes need to be safe for the environment. This means that they limit or mitigate pollution and carbon emissions entirely. Sustainable manufacturers don’t harm the environments or communities where they gather materials and practice fair trade. 

Eco-Friendly Transport

How did your furniture get to the warehouse, and how did your furniture get to your house? Manufacturing uses eco-friendly transportation methods and energy to get your furniture where it needs to be. Buy locally and use furniture created with locally sourced materials to reduce gas emissions during transport. 

This is a necessary part of how to furnish your home responsibly and sustainably. You need to ensure that your furniture gets to you, but you should try to limit how far it has to go so that you can mitigate emissions. Even the packaging can affect how eco-friendly a shipment is. Furniture in tight and flat packages is more eco-friendly than big items with a ton of unnecessary packaging components. Overall, if you want to be eco-friendly, ask the right questions and become knowledgeable about what we discussed. That way, you can do your part in saving the environment.